The British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI) is the UK’s leading Trade Association for the Landscaping Sector and represents over 1800 members covering all aspect of the landscape trade, from training and design to installation and maintenance.

We are delighted to be sponsoring the Education and Employment area at this year’s FutureScape exhibition. The Landscaping industry recognises the importance of attracting new talent, with the skills needed, to the landscaping industry so that this remarkable and rewarding sector is sustained, developed, and made ready for the future.

BALI is working with employers and our industry partners to promote job and career opportunities and to ensure that access to the right training is available for all to ensure that the industry has the right people and skills to meet upcoming challenges and opportunities.

We are looking to do this through in two ways: GoLandscape and the BALI Academy. Over the two days of the exhibition, we will be explaining what we are doing to promote careers with our GoLandscape initiative and how we are taking forward ambitious plans for a BALI Academy as part of our response to the industry’s skills gaps.

GoLandscape is our education, skills and careers initiative which promotes careers in the landscape industry and is looking to attract young people and career changers into this exciting sector. GoLandscape also aims to bust some of the myths that surround the industry and show you that landscaping offers a serious and rewarding career path with a host of opportunities.

Landscapers make huge differences to private and public outdoor spaces, and it is a varied sector, incorporates a wide range of different job roles and, we believe, appeals to lots of different people with differing skill sets.

• If you enjoy construction, you could get involved in building exterior buildings, fences, walls, patios, and bridges to create new and exciting spaces.
• If you love sports, then grounds maintenance – looking after the world’s best sports pitches – from football to rugby and golf might be the role for you.
• Landscapers of all levels gain a knowledge of plants, and you can get involved in selecting plants, planting, and maintenance.
• With environmental concerns coming to the fore, landscapers help create and conserve outside spaces, for wildlife, plants and to prevent erosion, creating and maintaining green spaces that provide a wealth of health benefits.
• And if you have a creative flair, then Landscape Designers and Architects can work alongside Building Architects to design exciting and functional outside spaces.

Our industry requires, and offers opportunities for, creative, multi-skilled and talented individuals to carry out the designing of projects, sourcing and ordering of a broad range of materials, along with the craftspeople that construct and build the projects, the horticulturalists that select and plant out the chosen plant material and the teams that then go onto maintain these green spaces.

Demand for skilled landscapers and other professionals, remains high and many landscaping businesses are looking to employ skilled labour to meet their current and future workload.  And the future workload has the potential to be huge.  BALI’s members anticipate a significant and ongoing increase in the demand for their services in the next 12 months, so this could be a great time for you to consider bringing your qualities to the industry and embark on a rewarding career.

As part of BALI’s GoLandscape initiative, we have also been looking at how we can help those already in the industry to build on their existing skills and raise standards in the landscaping sector.

BALI is committed, therefore, to developing plans for a BALI Academy which we hope will become a centre of excellence within the industry helping to address the sector’s skill shortage, as well as ensuring the future and professionalism of our industry.

The BALI academy will also develop dedicated standards that cover the much-needed skills, based on fundamental industry standards that our research has identified, and our members are asking for.  BALI will ensure that they are appropriate to the varying levels needed and will help employers and employees develop the essential industry skills and knowledge to fill identified skills gaps.