Starting a career is something that you can ideally begin in your early to mid 20’s, following a full education, perhaps a gap year or two, and then some work experience. However, some leading psychology professionals believe the ideal time to start your career is actually in your 40’s. This is because they may have slightly older children, life experience, and experience in jobs they don’t like. The only problem with starting later is, you may not have the time or the funds to complete a full education for a new career. That doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t options for you though. In fact, there some amazing options for you in the home and garden career sector.

If you love being creative, working face to face with clients and being hands on, there are some rewarding job options available to you within home and garden industries.

Whatever your age is, home and gardens is an incredibly rich pool of jobs and career choices that you can tap into, sometimes without any formal qualifications at all.

A career in the home and garden industry may be right for you if you enjoy:

• Being creative

• Working with your hands

• Are organised

• Want to make a real difference in people’s lives

• Enjoy transformational jobs

• Are self motivated and can use initiative

If you fancy working in one of the most rewarding career sectors around, take a look at these amazing home and garden jobs for inspiration:

Garden Designer – Designing a new garden based on a clients brief, and potentially managing that transformation.

If you have great vision and love to be creative in the garden, garden design could be a great career for you. You will spend a lot of time with your clients so good customer facing skills are a must. You’ll need to be organised and communicative, and you should have an excellent knowledge of horticulture and plants. There are jobs with local councils, jobs with private customers, with organisations like The National Trust. Lots of opportunities if you’re determined to find them. To get started you can self teach, although a college course would be handy, as well as experience putting knowledge into practise in volunteer projects. Checkout this article for more guidance on how to get started as a garden designer.

Arborist – Climbing trees to assess their safety, trim them and to assist in taking complete trees down.

Whereas garden designers tend to change what is in a garden and make it look beautiful, arborists have a higher focus on trees and shrubs and keeping them safe: essentially working with what is already there. It is an incredibly dangerous job and you will have to train for years to become qualified enough to do the job on your own. Statistics show that although deaths in the Arborist sector in the UK are only 24 in the last ten years, injury numbers run into the thousands.

Of course, training removes a lot of the risk and those in the job consider the risks measured and completely worth it for the rewards. Once qualified you can command a handsome wage and you could find yourself working with construction companies, as part of ecology studies, or with garden designers – there are lots of career paths for this kind of qualification. This YouTube video on how to become an arborist is a great starting point for your research into this exciting job.

Interior Designer – Transforming part of a home, or a complete home based on a clients brief and potentially managing that transformation.

In Australia interior design is a popular career and statistics show you may need a degree and lots of experience to compete with the very best in the business. However, there are shorter courses at colleges you can do, and experience does go a long way. If you can create a fantastic portfolio through projects with friends and perhaps some volunteer design projects then you’re off to a great start. This kind of job is perfect for somebody who instantly sees the potential of a home when they walk into it.

Painter & Decorator - Providing redecorating and decorating services to both private and commercial clients.

Painting and decorating is a highly practical job for people who like to be hands on, but without too much creativity. What you need to do to decorate the room or surface will be pre-planned, although you will need to use practical skills to complete the job. There are no set qualifications needed to do the job so you can do an apprenticeship or find somebody accomplished to work alongside to gain experience. The more experience you get, and the broader your skillset, the more you’ll be able to earn.

Joiner – Creating items such as worktops, furniture and tables and also constructing things like kitchens or sheds.

If you are quite mathematical but also like to work with your hands, being a joiner could be a great career for you. Joiners work in workshops making all kinds of things like kitchens, bespoke sheds, tables and chairs. Joiners also work fitting kitchens and bespoke furniture and accessories. There is no set qualification needed, and most people learn from passion projects at home. To get started properly you may initially need to create a good setup at home complete with tools like saws and workbenches. You may even need to source generators for sale and safety gear to turn it into a professional workshop suitable for all weathers. Or you could try and work alongside a carpenter getting to know the trade using their tools in exchange for labour.

Once you have the right level of experience you could work in many different settings, including commercial settings, in private homes, gardens and even on large scale construction jobs. To find out more about becoming a joiner/carpenter, this article is a really great start.

The best way to predict the future, is to create it – Abraham Lincoln

Getting a career going is never easy, regardless of how old you are but it is always possible. Whether you’re fresh from a gap year and just starting out, experiencing a quarter life crisis at the age of 26 (its a thing), or you’re later in life and yearn for more meaning to your routine, there is a job for you. The home and garden sector has so many options, a few of which we have discussed above, but many which are there to be discovered when you research your options. Start looking into one of the most satisfying and rewarding industries today and see what’s there for you, it could be the beginning of an exciting new chapter for you.