3 July 2026
Results at a glance
The Context: Creative Talent Needed Commercial Structure
Thomas Hoblyn Garden Design was built around craft, creativity, and a deep understanding of landscape.
Thomas Hoblyn is an award-winning British landscape designer, horticulturist, and plantsman. His work spans private gardens, country estates, healing gardens, and larger landscape projects, with a reputation shaped by design quality and horticultural expertise.
But running a design practice requires more than design ability.
For Thomas, the work itself was the part he loved. The challenge was the language and structure around the business: the jargon, the management disciplines, and the “necessary evils” that come with building a company rather than simply practising a craft.
That is a common problem in expert-led businesses.
The founder is highly skilled at the thing the business sells, but the business still needs structure, accountability, and commercial understanding if it is going to grow without draining the person who started it.
The Approach: Making Business Feel Usable
Phil’s work with Thomas focused on turning the commercial side of the business into something clearer and more manageable.
This was not about replacing creativity with corporate process.
It was about helping Thomas understand the mechanics of the business well enough to build something stable around his strengths.
The coaching focused on:
For a creative founder, that distinction matters.
The goal was not to become less creative. It was to stop the business side feeling like an obstacle to the creative work.
The Transformation: From Avoiding the Business Side to Owning It
As the work developed, the shift was in Thomas’s relationship with the business itself.
The commercial side became less abstract and less frustrating. Instead of business language feeling like something separate from the creative work, it became part of how the practice could be protected, strengthened, and developed.
That created more clarity.
It allowed Thomas to think about the future of the company with more confidence, rather than seeing the operational and commercial disciplines as distractions from the work.
Phil’s coaching style is shaped that he does not do the work for you, nurture is something that he is really good at
The business became something he could lead more deliberately.
Not just something he had to keep carrying in the background.
“Phil’s coaching style is shaped by a simple principle: he won’t do the work for you. His strength lies in nurturing your development, asking the right questions, and helping you find the clarity and confidence to create lasting change yourself.”– explains Thomas Hoblyn, Garden Designer at Thomas Hoblyn Garden Design.
The Outcome: A More Stable Business for the Future
The outcome was a stronger foundation for Thomas Hoblyn Garden Design.
The practice was better positioned to grow with more structure, more confidence, and a clearer sense of how the business should support the creative work at its centre.
The business benefited from:
“From a long-term point of view, you need this constant coaching, because we are going to grow, and things are changing so rapidly, that we are going to need help on. It is a safety blanket for your business having Phil around.” concludes Thomas.
For Thomas Hoblyn Garden Design, coaching helped connect creative excellence with business discipline.
Not by diluting the craft.
By building a business strong enough to support it.
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