Exploring Life & Business with Patrick Bell of City Garden Co

Today we’d like to introduce you to Patrick Bell.

Hi Patrick, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started creating gardens in my twenties while studying at the University of Georgia, as a very small landscape design/build company. We tried our hands at everything from stone walls and features, to stone patios and lots of brick work, full planting designs, wood structures, etc. I loved the process of hardscape construction, mastering different stone work techniques, etc. When I finished school I went off to work in garden design in various different places, but came back to Athens and started City Garden Company. It started out with small planting jobs, container plantings, small patios, and at first simply by word of mouth. As we grew, we settled into a niche focusing on modern landscape design, and we gravitated more and more to projects in Atlanta and the surrounding areas.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Owning a company is hard to navigate a lot of the time, but doing so successfully makes me a better business person. Besides the design and construction work that we love, the other roles as a business owner can really bog you down. Marketing, accounting, web design, staffing… sometimes keeping it all together makes you feel like you’re being pulled in all directions at the same time.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about City Garden Co?
We are a full-service landscape design+build firm with over 25 years of construction experience, designing almost all of the projects we build. We have been fortunate this year to be recognized for design/build excellence by several organizations – notably, Urban Ag Council, the Georgia Design Awards through Atlanta Magazine, and the Association of Professional Landscape Designers. I describe us as high-performance garden design because it’s not only high-quality, but also smart, with an efficient process, meticulous installation and modern material selection. We believe design can be a solution to a visual or stylistic problem, or a site systems issue, a topographical problem, etc.

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I am not sure about luck, but we do feel lucky to work in our field and with the clients we have had, and those we will have in the future. We just love creating gardens and learning. Maybe some luck is involved if you’re able to make a living doing what you love.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.citygardenco.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/citygardencompany/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/citygardencompany/videos/

Image Credits
Kaylinn Gilstrap