She Mows – a women-led Reporoa-based lawn and garden service – has been in business for five and a half years.
Nine women – plus one semi-retired bloke – swap between lawn mowers, hedge trimmers and chainsaws, tidying Bay of Plenty properties.
“I truly never believed it would ever grow to this,” Fitzgerald said.
She never expected to have employees or end up with a title she “hate[s]” — boss.
Mowing people’s lawns wasn’t in the life plan either.
Fitzgerald was an oncology nurse at Auckland’s Starship Hospital but left after her father died from a heart attack.
She returned to Reporoa to help her mother run the family farm.
The shift, relationship changes, left Fitzgerald needing a way to support her three young boys.
“It was a period of my life where I was pulling strength from wherever I could find it,” Fitzgerald said.
She realised she “quite enjoyed” mowing lawns and spotted a gap in the local market for another garden maintenance business.
Fitzgerald started taking whatever work she could get.
“Some of those gardens I did, and I was on my own … I don’t even know if I’d do that now.”
Some were “horrific”, but she had the mindset “any job’s a job”. She was determined to succeed.
Her first job was in Rotorua, where her equipment was fairly bare-bones.
“I was out on the footpath … I had a broom and was sweeping the concrete …
“Jim’s Mowing was down the road, and he held up his leaf blower, and he’s like, you need one of these …
“I’m like, ‘One day’.”
The day Fitzgerald bought a leaf blower was “so satisfying”.
She Mows founder Amanda Fitzgerald built her business from a second-hand mower, a borrowed trailer and a “random thought”.
She said the harder she worked, the more equipment she could get.
“It’s been cool to grow my tools, just as I could afford it.”
She had about two clients back then, but the workload grew.
“Quite often, I’d be still mowing at 9.30pm,” Fitzgerald said.
It wasn’t long before she needed help.
Her best friend, Candice Riddle, was the first to join her.
Riddle initially helped when she could around her young children. She is Fitzgerald’s “main wingman” now, working about five days a week.
“We think it’s so cool because we get paid to hang out together,” Fitzgerald said.
More women followed.
Some approached Fitzgerald looking for work, while others “popped up” at just the right time.
Building a women-led crew was not intentional; it “just happened”, Fitzgerald said.
Working in a male-dominated industry came with some assumptions.
Clients sometimes thought they would need to call in a man for tougher jobs, Fitzgerald said.
“As soon as someone says, ‘Oh, we’ll get a guy to do that,’ I’m like, ‘No, I’ll do that’.”
Fitzgerald wanted people to know: “We can do it all”.
An elderly woman watched Fitzgerald chainsaw down a bunch of trees in awe.
“You don’t even need a man. You go, girl,” she told Fitzgerald.
From left: Hayley van der Put, Emily Braithwaite, Amanda Fitzgerald and Candice Riddle are among the women behind She Mows.
Clients also loved hearing the women “cracking up laughing” in their gardens.
“We all have FOMO [fear of missing out] when one of us isn’t working,” Fitzgerald said.
They “get the job done” – but it was obvious they all “love to work”.
She believed camaraderie was part of what made She Mows stand out.
She Mows regularly tends to about 54 lawns in Reporoa alone, including residential properties, schools and businesses.
That’s before the “lots” of one-off jobs Fitzgerald said the team picks up.
Fitzgerald said she had learnt a lot since starting the business – the biggest lesson being to back herself.
“The confidence doesn’t come from waiting … [it] comes from doing.”
She said she had been “so lucky” with support from her community.
Riddle became emotional speaking to the Rotorua Daily Post about Fitzgerald’s journey.
“She’s sacrificed so much,” Riddle said.
“[It] hasn’t been easy all the time, but she’s [Fitzgerald] just pushed and pushed …
“She’s got so many people that she doesn’t even realise that are just in awe of her [and] what she’s done.”
Riddle was “so proud”.
Fitzgerald had her eye on more work in Rotorua, but said growth could not come at the expense of what made She Mows “special”.
She wanted to continue building the crew’s knowledge and skills.
Annabel Reid is a multimedia journalist for the Bay of Plenty Times and the Rotorua Daily Post, based in Rotorua. Originally from Hawke’s Bay, she has a Bachelor of Communications from the University of Canterbury.
Comments are closed.