National Gardening Week falls at the end of April and we took the opportunity to catch up with Innovating for Growth: Scale-ups alumni and current mentor for the Innovating for Growth: Mentoring programme, Natalie Taylor, founder of Acacia Facilities, a landscaping service for businesses and individuals throughout the UK.

Acacia Facilities specialises in interior and exterior landscaping from design to finish, including garden, pot and replica plants, living walls (very Instagram-worthy), fresh cut flowers and seasonal decorations alongside maintenance services.

After growing up in a family of avid gardeners, Natalie had inherited the green fingered genes (her grandmother’s maiden name was fittingly, Green) and was destined to work with nature. After becoming inspired by the benefits of having indoor and outdoor plants, both in personal and business spaces, and spotting a gap in the market, Natalie set up her business in 1996 to improve wellbeing and transform spaces with plants and maintenance services.

Finding the gap in the market can be a difficult task, but for Natalie the best piece of advice she received was to “break from the norm. Look at your interests and problems in your sector of business and ask yourself the questions: Are they things people, other than you, are interested in? Do people spend money on these activities? Are there problems present that people need solving? Are these things that make people happy? If any, all or some of your answers are a ‘yes’, then you have a niche which could be profitable.”

Natalie is also proud of how Acacia differentiates themselves from their competition, “we pride ourselves in offering a personalised service to our customers. We will provide bespoke services to customers’ needs. We are always ready to assist at all times during our business agreement. Our customers are not just a number we know each customer by name.”

Word of mouth has been extremely important to Acacia, with 80% of business originating from recommendations, which highlights the importance of the personal touches. Not to rest on her laurels however, Natalie applied and was successful in getting on to the Business & IP Centre’s Innovating for Growth: Scale-ups programme to help take the business to the next level, using the specialist tailored business support in area such as marketing, branding, intellectual property and more.

One of the most memorable jobs in her career, as Natalie explains was for the Shrek première, “we were asked to create a swamp style effect with plants and flowers at Somerset House. The outside grounds of such an historical building was huge and took a lot of planning, but the finished product looked amazing and exceeded the customer’s expectations and ours!”

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If you are already running a business and are looking to take it to the next level like Natalie, our three-month Innovating for Growth programme can help turn your growth idea into a reality. Visit our website to Find out more here and register your interest!