3 Sheds Garden Creatives: a brand built around a van wrap and a personalised plant pot

3 Sheds Garden Creatives is a creative gardening service in South Wales, founded by Tony at the end of 2020. He'd been working on Jess and Dave's garden when the conversation about branding started. We built him the system: identity, guidelines, van wrap and a one-off social media training session because, by then, we knew Tony too well not to.

The outcome

A complete brand identity for 3 Sheds Garden Creatives, anchored on an illustrated icon flexible enough to work on a van panel, a plant pot or a social tile.

Delivered:

• Brand strategy through a discovery session focused on Tony's existing clients and the projects he wanted to do more of
• Five concept routes, each developed with full van wrap mockups so Tony could see the logo at delivery scale before choosing
• The chosen identity (Concept 5): full lockup plus standalone illustrated icon, designed to work alone or together depending on the application
• A considered colour palette that landed on the first round
• A brand guidelines document built to pass through printers, signwriters and web developers as Tony's business grows
• Brand touchpoints including van wrap and a personalised plant pot
• A one-off social media training session walking Tony through on-brand reels and static posts

Tony came away with a brand that travels with the work: on the van, in the garden, in client conversations and on his social feeds.

The challenge

Tony had been quietly building 3 Sheds since 2020. The work was already strong; the brand wasn't yet doing any of it justice. As the post-pandemic gardening market got more competitive, he needed to be the creative gardening service that came to mind first, and he needed a more cohesive foundation for showing the work on social.

The brief had three parts:

• An identity distinctive enough to hold its own at scale on a van and intimate enough to live on a plant pot
• A brand system Tony could apply himself without commissioning a designer for every new touchpoint
• Enough social-media literacy to keep the brand alive across reels and posts between gardening jobs

There was also the unusual context. Tony was the gardener doing Jess and Dave's own garden when the project started. The relationship was personal before it was professional, and the brand had to read as Tony's, not as something stamped on top of him.

Our approach

The discovery session ran in Tony's natural register: a conversation about the projects he was already winning, the clients he wished he had more of and the gardens he most enjoyed building. From that, we had what we needed: an audience picture, a sense of the work's personality and a clear creative direction.

Key creative decisions:

• Five concepts, each shown as a full van wrap. Most concept presentations show the logo on a white background and ask the client to imagine. We didn't. Tony saw every concept already deployed at delivery scale, which made the decision easier and the chosen route more confident.
• An illustrated icon that stands alone. Concept 5 was built so the icon and the wordmark could work separately or together. That flexibility is the difference between a logo that lives on one surface and one that travels across the whole business.
• A palette that landed first time. We developed colourway variations but didn't need many; the original palette already fit.
• A brand guidelines document built for handover. Tony's brand was going to pass through printers, signwriters and web developers as the business grew. The guidelines were structured to make those handovers painless.
• The fun details, kept in. Van mockup, personalised plant pot. The brand touches that signal Tony's own personality were part of the deliverable, not a polish step.
• A one-off social media training session. Not something we usually offer, but by the end of the project it would have been wrong to leave Tony to figure it out alone. We sat down, walked him through the dos and don'ts, and showed him how to use the brand on reels and static posts.

What it does for 3 Sheds

Tony's van is now a moving piece of brand. The plant pot is a calling card. The social feed has a recognisable voice. And the brand guidelines mean any contractor Tony pulls in for printing, signage or web work can stay in lane without re-asking what 3 Sheds is supposed to look like.

Credits

• Client: 3 Sheds Garden Creatives · Tony, Founder
• Studio: Alchemy