YGS celebrates 45 years of BALI membership

YGS Landscapes, the Plymouth-based grounds maintenance and commercial landscaping company, is celebrating 45 years of membership of the British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI).

The partnership - which began when the Association itself was less than ten years old - has now spanned 45 of BALI's 54 years.

The business was founded in 1973 as Yealm Gardening Services and, in 1987, was purchased by its current owner Steve Warren-Brown and renamed YGS Landscapes. Today it is one of the South West's established commercial landscaping contractors, working with housebuilders and developers across Devon and Cornwall.

Across those decades the industry has professionalised, and YGS has kept pace: it holds ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 certification alongside CHAS and SMAS accreditation, and in 2024 completed BALI's Quality Standard Review, the Association's independent vetting of workmanship, skill and health and safety practice.

Managing Director Steve Warren-Brown said, "The paperwork has changed beyond recognition since those first vetting visits - the standards, the accreditations, the audits, and rightly so. What hasn't changed is that this industry still comes down to people who care about the ground they look after."

Thirty years of growing our own

YGS's answer to the industry's skills shortage has been to encourage new people into the trade - and keep them. The company took on its first apprentice on 21 September 1997, and almost thirty years on he is still with the company today.

That commitment took on a new shape in 2023. Having long felt the sector was overlooked in local apprenticeship provision, YGS raised the issue with City College Plymouth, and a shared frustration became a collaboration: together they developed a two-year Level 2 Horticulture and Landscaping apprenticeship, launched that September. Since then, 14 apprentices have come through the programme, with five more about to join.

"We recognise the challenge of attracting new people into our sector, and the importance of offering a varied and enriched training experience," said Steve. "Exposing apprentices to as many facets of our sector as possible equips them to make informed choices about their own career pathways."

The company's work has been recognised at the highest level of the industry. In 2021, YGS won a Principal Award at the BALI National Landscape Awards for the Sherford living wall - 380 linear metres and 10 metres high, one of the most striking green infrastructure features in the South West.

Alongside its commercial work, YGS donates to community groups, gardening clubs and schools across the region - from materials and mulch for volunteer days to trees, time and expertise. For a company whose workforce is 100% locally employed, supporting the places its people live is central to its ethos.

45 years as a member

For YGS, BALI membership has never been a line on the letterhead: it is independent assurance for clients that standards are checked rather than claimed, a benchmark to be measured against, and a collective voice for a trade that spent decades being underestimated.

"Clients don't just take our word for it that we work to a standard - BALI checks," said Steve. "We joined when the Association was still in its first decade. Forty-five years later, that partnership still earns its place, every year."

For more about YGS, visit www.ygslandscapes.co.uk