MorePeople expands the horticulture team
Since our creation, MorePeople has always had a close link to Horticulture with our founder, Guy Moreton, having a degree in Horticulture and spent the years pre founding MorePeople living and breathing flowers and plants. As a result, we’ve been recruiting in Horticulture for 23 wonderful years now!
Sarah Want joined the team 4 years ago and now manages the Horticulture Team. She found an instant love for the Horticulture sector, becoming our specialist recruiter and her knowledge has come completely from being immersed in the industry and also studying hard for her RHS Level 2.
Over the past year we have expanded greatly.
Ben Woodward was our first horti recruit, who supported in building a strong desk covering retail roles within the garden and leisure sectors. Again, Ben found a real interest in the industry and actually spent 2 days living the life of a Plant Area Assistant at one of our clients, British Garden Centres. He was joined by Felicity Mitchell 6 months ago who very quickly got up to speed. Between the two of them, they cover all roles within garden retail from supervisors to area managers in plant areas, sundries, farm shops, overall store management, gardening, home retail, outdoor leisure, seasonal and restaurants. They work with garden centres across the UK from the biggest chains to the small family run businesses.
Sarah has been recently been joined by Lucy Renner on the Horticulture desk. The two of them recruit for hands on roles within horticulture, from supervisors right up to directors and across commercial growing, landscaping, grounds maintenance, agronomy, plant science and more.
In addition to our Garden centre specialists (Ben and Felicity) and our dedicated Horticulture experts (Sarah and Lucy) our overall MorePeople Commercial recruitment team have two specialists who are also focussed on the garden and leisure and horticulture clients working on sales and buying roles.
Main Board roles such as MD’s, CEO’s Finance Directors and Non exec Directors are also covered by our MorePeople Exec Team which is headed by Guy.
Sarah, Team Manager said: “Horticulture is such a fascinating industry and I can’t see myself being anywhere else. The first time I thought ‘wow, this is really interesting’ was when I visited my first glasshouse, a herb grower on the South Coast. The people in the industry are great and I pride myself in being able to support the industry in my own little way. When I first started, we had one recruiter that covered all of our horti roles – garden centres, growers, buyers, sales, landscapers etc. Our commercial team now have two people covering solely horticulture as well as four of us recruiting in the industry day in, day out. Six of us is great, but we have no plans to stop there! It’s been great having the ability to grow the desk in the time I’ve been at MorePeople, but it’s more important now to be able to pass on the knowledge to my colleagues and ensure they get as excited about it as I do! I get to take part in various panel discussions, talks to universities and podcasts to share the enthusiasm. If just one person listens and wants to come into Horticulture, then it’s a job well done.”
As well as the people mentioned, we also have specialist functional teams at MorePeople who recruit across Operations and Engineering, Finance, HR and admin as well as our Technical Team who recruit technical managers, technologists and quality control/assurance roles.
MorePeople also take an active approach in supporting the industry - something we have done since day one. We are very active supporters of the YPHA, with Sarah sitting on the committee and have stands at all the major trade shows – including Four Oaks and National Plant Show and we attend every show going in the sector eg GLEE, Futurescape and of course the GIMA Conferences and Awards! We are very aware of the work still needed to significantly develop the image of the sector and are very involved in educating the next generation of growers by going to various universities every year such as Writtle, Reading and Nottingham to give talks to the students and recently we have become one of the main sponsors of the new Colegrave Seabrook Foundations “Cultivate Your Future” podcast initiative.
www.morepeople.co.uk/blog/2023/03/cultivate-your-future-podcast