Handsome Landscapers Apprenticeship Success

29 June 2021

Handsome Landscapes company owner Hadley Boyce was one of the Primary ITO's first graduates in the Landscaping Apprenticeship, under Primary ITO Training Adviser Jonathan Gradwell.


Hadley has now run his own company, Handsome Landscapes, for the past nine years with wife Stacie.

Believing strongly in training as a great way to get your team up to a professional consistent level of work, Hadley had no hesitation to sign up his apprentice Brett Stevenson.

Brett is enrolled in the Landscaping apprenticeship programme with Primary ITO. Brett has an honours degree in Spatial Design and has enjoyed working out on site after doing the degree. He's taken on the apprenticeship to get the practical experience to add to the theory. Along with the hard graft, he’s loving being able to use his design skills. One of the best parts of the job he says are making the finished project come together with the finishing touches. He also loves being able to work outside after doing a degree mainly indoors!

Brett has really enjoyed the variety within the programme and admits it’s great to learn while you’re earning. He thinks it has been easy to complete the Level 3 programme so fast because he’s so interested in the work he’s doing. He feels like he can trust himself that he knows what he is doing, having gained the knowledge and the experience from completing his Apprenticeship papers.

Brett is proving to be one of the fastest apprentices to complete his Level 3 Certificate and Jonathan has noticed the high standard of work go along with it.

Having handed over his last few papers in order to be assessed for the Level 3, Brett can now begin Level 4. His brother, who's recently joined the company, has decided he’s keen to start an apprenticeship too!

Boss Hadley is positive about the training offered by Primary ITO. Hadley puts a real emphasis on how this way of registered learning means he knows his guys are competent and have high standard of workmanship and produce high quality work for their clients. Every job in Wellington is unique too – the terrain and the challenges. Having a small, quality trained team is a great way to achieve the high standard level of work Hadley aims for and all their jobs are coming in by word of mouth referrals.

Hadley is really proud of what Brett’s achieved on his apprenticeship in record time with really high quality work. It’s telling of what a tight-knit team they are too - where they don’t go for a Christmas beer at the pub but instead adventure into the Tararua Ranges for their RnR.

With apprenticeships also being free at the moment under the Government’s free trades training scheme & financial assistance for the employer available under the Apprenticeship Boost Scheme - it really is a great time for companies to take advantage of getting their people into training.

Primary ITO: [email protected] or 0800 20 80 20

Handsome Landscapes Ltd: [email protected] or 027 2939 639