For those of you that came to our 25th Anniversary party last Thursday, below are a selection of photos from the party – spot yourself! For those of you who couldn’t make it, we missed you!
I also include a transcript of my speech as quite a few people missed it and asked about it afterwards. I may have added one or two jokes on the night, but this is roughly what I said! John.
“It will surprise very few of you that when I first met Chris Bowles thirty-four years ago, I was riding a bike (although equally unsurprising is that he wasn’t). Chris was working for Clifton Nurseries at the time and I joined shortly afterwards. Five years later, Chris and I went out for dinner and came up with the idea of Bowles & Wyer, with my brother Nick. The plan was delayed for four years, partly due to the recession in the late eighties. Our business advisor in those day was Michael Johnson and looking through the job book the other day I saw that his garden was the second project we undertook – so he put his money where his mouth was!
I can’t quite believe it, but here we are, twenty-five years later. Nearly all of you in this room, friends, family, suppliers, clients (and some of you are in more than one category!) have played a part in that journey. The drawings on the invitation are part of that story. 19 Wilton Crescent was a project we undertook with Paul Davis and Partners in 1993 – and we are still working with them today on Kings Road and Regents Crescent. Klas Nilsson of Northacre gave us our first large commercial project at Observatory Gardens (and many others afterwards, including The Lancasters). Northacre are still a client today – we are working on Palace Street with them. We first worked with KSR twenty years ago on the Pavilion Apartments and they, BTP and Elliot Wood (also old friends) are all involved with 41 Frognal – another remarkable job, currently on site.
Those of you close to Bowles & Wyer know that we have being going through something of a quiet revolution in the last two years, helped by Alan Wick. The business has transformed and is re-inventing itself. Although a lot of people have been with us a long time, many new faces have joined us, and we have welcomed a few old friends back as well! We have been doing a lot of thinking about what we are for. We’re in this industry for the love of it. The closest we could come to why we do what we do is that we are here to ‘Enhance Lives and Landscapes’. We want people to be happier for having worked with us, either as an employee, a client, a supplier or on the same team. And enhancing landscapes is not just about creating beautiful spaces; we also want to leave the environment better than we found it.
Two and a half years ago sitting round a table we asked ourselves what we wanted from the future. The answer we came up with was ‘Better fit for our employees; better fit for our clients; just better.’
So, thanks to all of you who have played a part in this story over the last twenty-five years and will continue to do so.”
July 6, 2018
