Writer and mother of two, Colleen Sheehan founded Weeding Women in 1989. Her idea sprouted from the frustration of not being able to find a good gardener to help her at home.
“They were so slow! I got so frustrated I decided to finish it off myself, paid a couple of female friends to help me, and we did a great job in no time. That was the birth of Weeding Women.”
Her team of gardeners grew from two to 20 in a fortnight. The business quickly blossomed – literally from the ground up – to become an iconic West Australian brand.
As a family owned and operated business, the core values of Weeding Women have been the same since its inception. Simply put, they are:
- to deliver a hardworking service that is good value for money
- be reliable
- treat customers as we wish to be treated
Today Weeding Women operates from a head office in Osborne Park. There is a team of over 40 staff including a base network of 25 gardeners, four franchisees, plus support staff, administration and management.
Some other fun facts about Weeding Women
- Weeding Women was the first gardening maintenance group in Western Australia. It entered the industry just before the ‘garden boom’ hit Australia. Burke’s Backyard had started a weekly gardening program on TV and Gardening Australia began shortly after.
- The business weathered the recession of 1990/91, the boom and busts of mining, and the ravages and unpredictability of climate change. Now we can add a global pandemic to the list!
- In its 30 years, the Weeding Women team has spent approximately 600,000 hours caring for more than 180,000 gardens in WA.
- Since its inception, the amount of mulch Weeding Women has supplied and spread in client gardens is enough to mulch the whole of Optus Stadium five times over!
Key changes / differences in gardens of today, compared with when Weeding Women started:
- Blocks are smaller and we are more water conscious. Those factors impact on garden styles.
- Lawns have become smaller and fewer, due to water restrictions.
- Grey water systems, water tanks, composting and worm farms are more widely used.
- Natives have become very popular and can be a beautiful addition to a garden.
- Kitchen gardening has grown in popularity, with even people in apartments wanting to grow vegies in pots.
- Families used to spend weekends together working in the garden. These days, there are more dual-income families with higher disposable incomes, so they prefer to spend their weekends playing sport, relaxing or entertaining together.
- Outdoor living is still as popular as ever, but more people now want to share that space with others.
- Having a gardener used to mean you were wealthy, but the service industry no longer reflects that. People are time poor, so engaging services to help them is commonplace for a growing number of householders.
- Our aging population has seen a growing number of clients who love to do their own garden, no longer able to.
- Water restrictions and climate change have changed how we care for our garden. Tropical or English styles have been replaced by beautiful native and desert styles. Plant selection, plant placement and how we water our gardens have changed dramatically. Products such as wetting agent and mulch have become so important to the success of a garden.