Business in the garden

When your business is also your back garden, there is a lot of incentive to make your premises as tidy and attractive as possible.
Morgan and Shirley Donelley still live on the site they bought 30 years ago, alongside the sawmill they set up from scratch.
"If something is important to you, you live it and you love what you are doing," said Shirley Donelley.
This philosophy may go some way to explaining the Donelley's win in the corporate section of the Keep Rotorua Beautiful 2011 awards.
The business started in 1974 when they bought a $2500 portable batten mill and followed the main logging contractors around the Waiotapu Forest turning timber left overs into fencing battens at a rate of about 25cu m a day.
A few years later, the couple bought 30 acres in Reporoa and the Donelley Sawmill opened in 1977. It now employs 30 staff and produces about 200cu m a day.
The business grew to include its own logging crews and fleet of trucks, although now it is focused solely on wood processing.
Morgan Donelley said this was characteristic of the industry as a whole, which had seen most firms specialise in one part of the wider process.
"We don't want to be the biggest, but we want to be a great business with pride in presentation. We spend a lot of money each year and have a full-time groundsman. It's good to have a nice, tidy work environment and it attracts better people."
He said the mill was "a bit out of the way" so not many customers called in, but those who did always commented on the site.
Keeping everything clean and tidy is also important for health and safety at the mill and Donelley said staff took better care of the workplace if it was in a good condition to start with.
But it is not just about being clean and tidy - the Donelleys have done a lot of landscaping and planted trees around the property, now well established.
Living on the property means the couple have made a real effort to create an environment that is pleasant to live in, as well as work. Bands of trees block the view of the mill from the house and also limit the amount of noise.
"We have been living with the noise for 30 years though, so these days we are more worried if we can't hear the machinery operating," Shirley Donelley said.
"It is our back yard and that's really the whole point of it. It's our home and our life."
The couple have also bought neighbouring land as it has come up for sale so there are now fewer neighbours to be affected by mill operations.
The couple are are now taking a more hands-off approach, with day-to-day management shifting to their son Aaron Donelley, who accepted the Keep Rotorua Beautiful award at a ceremony on March 30.
But they still live on site and take pride in the appearance of their home.