2022 Henchman Highlights

In the wind down to Christmas we put the kettle on and took some time to look back at the past year, here are some of our highlights:

Staff team building day

The HenchTeam started the year strong with a team building day on a frosty morning in January. Throughout the day the team put their skills to the test with axe throwing, archery, clay pigeon shooting, quad biking, and air rifles. It was a fun day with the competitive spirit running high, the winning team took home a bottle of champagne.

Garden Press Event 

Back to the London Design Centre to meet the gardening sector’s journalists, bloggers and influencers. Henchman has attended this event for years; it is great to meet new and familiar faces and catch up on the world of gardening and editorial calendars for the year ahead.

Two tripod ladders at the garden press event

Photoshoot with The 3 Grow Bags 

Sisters and bloggers Elaine, Laura and Caroline created The 3 Grow Bags website. We met them at the Garden Press Event and hit it off! We organised a photoshoot on their property to feature our Hi-Step, Tripod Ladder, wheelbarrows and ARS tools. The day consisted of a lot of photos, cups of tea, laughter and ladders!

Tripod line up at the 3 growbags photoshoot

RHS Malvern Spring Festival 

Kicking off the RHS show season at the Three Counties Showground with a bang! Blue skies, beautiful show gardens, and our show team back together. Our favourite garden was The Vitamin G Garden, designed by Alan Williams from Landform Consultants in partnership with BBC Radio 2 presenter Jo Whiley, and built by Landscapia. It was so good to catch up with old customers and meet lots of new ones.

Three people up tripod ladders

RHS Chelsea Flower Show

2 weeks later we are setting up Chelsea Flower Show. With the autumn Chelsea flower happening just 6 months before we were a well-oiled machine setting up our larger show stand. This year we worked with Burford Garden Company who provided us with some beautiful pleached beech trees as a backdrop to our stand. Our favourite show garden was the Perennial Garden ‘With Love’ by Richard Miers, Perennial is one of our charity partners and we were happy to see it went on to win the RHS People’s Choice for 2022. The show team experienced some wild weather, consisting of hailstorms with lightning and thunder and later in the week clear skies with 32 degrees heat.

Tripod ladder at chelsea flower show Craig Revel Horwood in a wheelbarrow

Platinum Jubilee supporter 

Over the years Henchman ladders and platforms have been used in Royal Households and private estates across the country to maintain hedging and trees. Because of this connection we were invited to be featured in Her Majesty The Queen: The Official Platinum Jubilee Pageant Commemorative Album. Natasha and Clare from Henchman attended the book launch at Claridges to celebrate. They met other companies featured in the book and watched the jubilee celebrations unfold. What a great occasion to mark the milestone.  

Henchman employees at the Queen's platinum jubilee pageant

Hitting 3,000 TrustPilot reviews and maintaining our 4.9 rating

We pride ourselves in our customers service and our fantastic reviews and this year we hit over 3,000 reviews on TrustPilot! Once our customers get their Henchman, they put them to work, this is one of our favourite reviews:

"Brilliant steady ladder *****

"The tripod ladder is both steady and secure. No branch is safe in my garden now. The summer house has been renovated."

No branch is safe when a Henchman is near!

RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival 

The heatwave hit in July just in time for the team to head back to London for Hampton Court. One of the joys of a July show is the abundance of roses, we teamed up with David Austin Roses to put some colour in our flower display on our stand. The festival was fantastic with so much going on throughout the showground. Our favourite garden was the Rose Tea Garden designed by Pollyanna Wilkinson.

Henchman team at Hampton court palace flower show

Sponsoring charities 

As part of our mission, we support as many charities as we can. This year our two main charity partners have been Life at No.27 and Perennial Gardeners' Royal Benevolent Society. This year we have also supported Inspire Spinal Foundation with their annual charity polo match and Wales Ape and Monkey Sanctuary with wheelbarrows.  

In December we supported the CPRE Gloucestershire and the Ernest Cook Trust with products to assist them with their ancient orchard revival work. Our customer service and marketing team joined Tim and the team from Ernest Cook to learn about maintaining ancient orchards. We learned about the ecological effects of mistletoe and how to prune it out of the tree safely.

Henchman team training with Orchard revival

Working with experts on our blog

This year we introduced some experts on our blog! We worked with David Austin Roses on How To Prune Roses In The UK, Annabelle Padwick on How to Grow Your Own Veg: Planting a Vegetable Garden, Andy The Hedge Barber on How to do Topiary - Hedge Sculpting Guide, and Plan For Ecology on our Using Hedges As Fences - The Benefits blog. Thank you to all our experts for their contribution, we have had many people read and enjoy them.

We hope you have enjoyed reading our 2022 highlights, here’s to 2023!