This week Jon Cleaver talks to Pete Cole - the man who runs a successful business without the aid of telephones and computers.

FOR most of us the electronic age is seen as progress on a grand scale - but not everyone is following the trend.

A Binley Woods man has bucked the super highway league and remains in the past, running a successful garden maintenance business.

Local man Pete Cole does not have a telephone, mobile, computer, or a car and business is booming.

Pete has lived in Binley Woods for 52 years. He honed his gardening skills from an early age, when he used to help out on his grandfather's allotment.

His father John Cole, who is 85, is also a keen cyclist, and along with Pete, tends their allotment. Pete now serves on the Binley Woods Allotments Committee.

Leaving school in 1969, Pete started work at a local nursery.
Pete recalls: "I had to de-bud roses throughout the summer and there were 60,000 of them.

"It was also a time when nurseries grew all their own produce, the benefit of learning plant production proved to be a bonus later on."

After 19 years at the nursery, Pete saw a gap in the market, between plant sales, and the up-keep of the garden, and in 1989 he left his job to start his own business in garden maintenance.

He added: "I had no client base at this point, so I placed a card in the local post office, with my address as the contact."

Pete was surprised with the response.

"Almost immediately people were knocking on my door," he said.
"From then it has been word of mouth, and I have enough work for my needs."

Most of Pete's clientele are locally based in Binley Woods, Wolston, or Brinklow.

With no car, Pete has adapted his 50-year-old Coventry Eagle, fitting it with a box on the back in which to carry
his tools.

"New clients are amazed when I turn up on my bike, laden with garden tools, after 19 years, " he said.

"I still have some of my original customers. Over the years, summer and winter, I am out in all weathers. I could not imagine doing anything else, and love the outdoor life, stopping to chat with the villagers, exchanging the local news, sometimes helping pensioners with little jobs they have dificulty with."

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