How the Cycle Access Fund is helping Emma grow her business by bike

Working as a wildlife garden designer means that Emma has to carry a lot of tools and equipment. However, conservation and sustainability are central to her work, so she was keen to reduce her dependence on driving.

She was driving four days a week to get to clients, which seemed at odds with her business ethics. She wanted to make a shift to cycling but wasn’t sure where to start.

Emma explains: “I do as much work locally as possible and all my work has a nature, conservation and sustainability slant to it. So it just made sense to me that I would arrive on a bike instead of in a car. The more I can do to make sure that I’m working in an environmentally friendly way just makes complete sense to me.”

A chance meeting with Angie Kinghorn, Cycling UK’s East Lothian Connecting Communities Development Officer, at the Dunbar RNLI Lifeboat Day meant she finally got the support she needed to cycle for work.

“I live near Dunbar and there’s a community event on every year called the Lifeboat Day,” Emma says. “Angie Kinghorn was there with a stall from Cycling UK and we got chatting about my work because I’d always had in my head that it would be great if I could travel by bike for work.”

Having somebody show me which places to look online was helpful. With all those decisions having the right person to speak to massively helped Emma Martindale, owner, Nature on the Mind

Emma’s son and husband are both “bike fanatics”, she says, but her own bike, in her words, is an “absolutely awful, terrible old thing”. She also wasn’t sure how she would transport all her gardening gear.

Trying it out

Emma saw the cargo bikes at the event, and through the Connecting Communities programme, Angie arranged for a loan of a cargo bike and delivered a trailer to trial using for her business. However, things didn’t go according to plan.

“I'm 5 foot 3 and this massive cargo bike and me didn’t really get on very well. It was just too big and unwieldy for me. I also live in quite a small terraced house with a little side path and getting the bike in and out was really hard.

“Angie and I hadn’t clocked how narrow my front gate is. Poor Angie, honestly, she brought this massive trailer all the way out to my house and it couldn’t get through. So she had to just take it away again.”

As Emma says: “To make a shift to cycling you just need there to be no barriers, don’t you?” Angie put her in touch with the Cycle Access Fund, and working with her local Senior Project Officer Judith Rowe, she researched options for cycles and storage.

Emma made a successful application for funding through the Cycle Access Fund so she could buy an electric bike, flatbed trailer, an Asgard storage shed and associated equipment. “Having Angie and Judith to chat through the options with was great,” Emma says.

“I got to meet Judith a couple of times online and we figured out what would be the right thing, and she explained to me about the Asgard shed. Having somebody show me which places to look online was helpful. With all those decisions having the right person to speak to massively helped as well.”

Benefits of cycling

She says there are many benefits to being able to cycle for work. One is that she feels a lot more connected with nature. “It’s a much more pleasant way to travel to work.

“I live in quite a scenic area, so I’m lucky in that I can cycle along a beachfront cycle path to get to some of my work sites. Previously I would have driven along a boring road. I have more connection to nature through being on the bike.”

She also feels fitter. “Then there’s the physical activity. Although it’s an e-bike, you still have to pedal, to move, to get on it. I still have to get my trailer out. I still have to pack it all up. So moving more is helpful.”

The electric assist brings its own benefits, allowing Emma to spend more time with her eight-year-old son. “Having the e-bike has meant that we cycle more together because he is fitter than me and he can cycle up hills.

“I think it’s made me do more journeys with him that I maybe wouldn’t have previously and also he loves the trailer. He’s always been mad about it!”

The environmental impact is important to Emma as someone who focuses on wildlife-friendly gardening. “People do like it,” she says. “Clients hire me because they want a wildlife-friendly garden. They like that. It’s definitely a selling point for them.

“People like the fact that you’re not having to use fuel. I’ve got solar panels that charge the battery. And I tell people that, so they know that I’m travelling through solar power, which again just suits my business really well, given the ethics behind it all.”

Emma is also a therapeutic horticulture practitioner, focusing on nature-based wellbeing through gardening, plant care and therapeutic horticulture sessions. Activities include nurturing school gardens, planting wildlife hedges, side-by-side garden coaching and therapeutic sessions.

“It’s a bit of an icebreaker for people,” she says. “Because you arrive in a way that’s still quite unusual. Kids absolutely love it.

“Sometimes I’m working with groups where people are socially anxious or there’s different mental health issues, so it’s something to talk about when you first arrive.”

Emma finds that her arriving by bike is a talking point because people aren’t expecting it. She enjoys this awareness-raising aspect. “It’s good for them to see that this is a possibility. Because a lot of folks – given my work and the amount of stuff I carry around with me – would think it’s not possible.

“It shows that you can travel by bike to do all sorts of different things. Hopefully it makes it feel more of an option for other people as well.”

Emma explains that at one of her local garden sites at a big estate recently, a man who works in the grounds team asked her if she had everything she needed on a trailer. “People are interested in how you’re getting about and that it is physically possible to carry my tools and equipment as well.”

Living in a village means Emma can use the electric bike and trailer to travel to sites in local villages as well as her nearest town. It makes her a bit of a novelty: “I think people like it. I don’t know anyone else locally who travels like that for the kind of work that I do. So it’s a bit unique; it’s something they can connect with me.”

Emma acknowledges that with a job like hers, which involves bringing tools, people assume that you have to use a car. She thinks it’s novel for people to see her on a bike. “Which is kind of crazy when you think about how long bikes have been around!”

One-car family

She was previously driving for all her work but says that now she probably only does one journey per month by car: “It has changed the way I travel completely.” She also does some shopping by bike, saying that she can cycle to the local bakery and put the bread in her panniers. She likes showing her young son what’s possible by bike.

“He gets to see me go about on a bike more than he would have done before,” Emma says. “I would have cycled on my rubbish falling-apart bike locally, just to go out and have a nice time, but maybe not have used it to get the shopping or something before. I think it shows him that you can use a bike to do your day-to-day things.”

The e-bike and trailer have allowed Emma to get rid of the family’s second car. “We used to be a two-car family and we’re now one!”

By using her electric bike, Emma can show people what’s possible. “People get to see me going about my daily work life and arriving at their house, at school or at a group with everything in a cargo bike. I just look like an average person, who’s an average level of fitness, and it works.

“I’ve got a tiny Instagram that I use sporadically. I put a video up when I first used the bike. The video is hilarious because I’m wobbling on it because it’s the first time I headed off to a job. But it was probably one of the most commented on things because everyone was like, ‘What? You’re going on a bike?’.”

“It’s wee bit hillier around here and I can go up the hills no problem at all even with a trailer. So hopefully it makes it feel doable for people and kind of breaks down that barrier. Hopefully makes people think about their businesses and what they might be able to do.”

Emma mentions a client of hers whose husband is self-employed and is looking at getting a bike and trailer. She also knows another local gardener who moved to the area recently. “I think she’s quite interested. She’s asked: ‘Who did you get the grant from? How did it work? What’s your shed like?’.”

Cycling for work

For anyone thinking about cycling for transport, Emma’s advice is to think about accessibility. For her, having a shed close to the house made all the difference. “I don’t have to go up to the very back of my garden and try and bring it all the way down through the garden.”

The shed is only used for her business, so it’s not full of stuff she doesn’t need. She keeps all her gear in specific boxes that easily fit on the trailer. “The accessibility side of it breaks down the barrier completely. I can just go out to the side of the house, get my bike, get my trailer, go.”

A separate bike and trailer are useful too, because she can leave the trailer behind. She recently had a job at a woodland site where she’s doing some conservation work. “I didn’t need all my tools, but the panniers that I got as part of the fund allow me to travel light with some small hand tools and a clip board and notepad.”

Emma advises getting the setup right – something she’s still playing around with. “You can load way more in the trailer and e-bike than you would think if you’ve got the right boxes.”

The Cycle Access Fund award also included funding for equipment. This meant Emma could invest in panniers and other bags for smaller items.

“If I’m doing surveys of gardens before I start working on them, I’ll be taking a note of the soil pH and the aspect and all of that. I’ve got checklists and clipboards and loads of paper and stuff. All that goes in the panniers.”

Emma has put a lot of thought into the kinds of tools she uses. She has a lot of multi-head tools. “I just have one handle and lots of heads, like the fork bit, the trowel bit and so on which all interchange, so I can carry less.

“Having the right bungee cords and the net to attach so that everything’s nice and secure means you’re not worrying about stuff falling out when you’re travelling.”

For anyone thinking about making the change, Emma is reassuring: “It feels very doable. I am short and I’m not super strong or anything. The trailer is very light; it’s not a big clunky wooden thing. You’ve got to find the right containers to go in it, but it means that it’s easier to move. I can lift it and hang it in the shed, no problem at all.”

Improving accessibility

Emma believes that access to safe cycling routes is essential to getting more people on bikes. She worries that some drivers come very close. “I think people are nervous being on a bike. I probably still am, I think quite rightly, cautious of drivers.”

Her village has a 20mph limit, she says, but many people ignore it. “Safe cycle routes, that’s the top priority. My son cycles a lot already and he’s 8. I’m already aware of making sure that he’s on a safe route. The more I can get him off the road, the better.”

Often, though, even designated cycle routes aren’t sufficient, with some of Emma’s local routes having both good and bad sections. “One of my main cycle paths has some great sections and then it has some bits with no dropped curb, even though it’s a national cycle route. I have to go like a snail with the trailer.

“Going from West Barns to East Linton is quite new for me. There is, in theory, a cycle path the whole way there but people seem to like parking on the cycle path. This is all new to me because I drove before for work.

“It happened last week and I had to get off the bike, go out into the road, walking on a 60mph road all the way around this van and back up again onto the cycle path. I was like, ‘Oh, this is hideous’.

“It was just a young guy. I don’t think he had a clue that he parked on the cycle path. He was on the phone. So make it really clear that it’s a cycle path and that people shouldn’t park on it perhaps.”

But accessibility isn’t just about cycle paths. Emma’s electric bike is also turning heads. She finds that a lot of people notice the bike on the path at Belhaven Bay. “I’ve had three or four different people stop me to ask ‘What is that?’

“I’ve got your Cycling UK stickers all over the trailer and the bike. Older people are quite interested. Things become a bit more inaccessible for some older people, don’t they? But an e-bike is a doable thing for them. I had three older ladies stop me on the front path to ask me what on earth was I doing!”

How the Cycle Access Fund helps

Emma says that meeting Angie at a community event made all the difference. A wide variety of people from all different walks of life visit these events, giving them an opportunity to see types of cycle they might not have seen before and different ways of using them.

She says: “I feel really lucky that I bumped into Angie that day. I would have known nothing about this. I probably wouldn’t have a trailer and bike right now.”

It’s easy to assume that with a small house, with a narrow front gate and path it would be impossible to get a trailer and electric bike through. “But there was a solution,” says Emma.

“Being able to try things out before people are going to have to spend a lot of money on something themselves, they don’t want to get it home and then realise it doesn’t work for them.”

Not having a garage meant that the funding for storage and equipment was helpful. “If I had a garage and I was going out of a drive, a different kind of trailer might be better,” she says. “But for me, I’ve got a small house, small side path and a small Asgard shed.”

Emma adds: “Angie does good work around individuals overcoming barriers or getting back on a bike again, that kind of thing like building confidence.

“But the more accessible things are, the better. E-bikes are still very expensive, aren’t they? Not everyone can afford one. The other schemes that you’re involved with, where people can share or borrow one, must make a big difference too.”

What’s next for Emma

Emma says that nature is always at the forefront of her mind when it comes to her business. She’s getting more requests for rewilding projects in people’s gardens so she’s dedicating more of her time to researching and reintroducing native plants.

I feel really lucky, cycling home in the sunshine. It’s brilliant. I’m very grateful to the fund and all the help I got to apply and everything too Emma Martindale

This “has a huge impact in terms of the wildlife and the birds and the pollinators”, she says, adding that “there’s something lovely about transporting native plants on a trailer. It just feels really nice!”

She also wants to focus more on local places that she can get to by bike. She says that she doesn’t want to “pick up a garden if I can’t get to it on my bike because it just makes sense to me.

“I’ve got the solar panels to charge it. I’ve got everything set up. It’s much better for my wellbeing travelling actively. I think having it as a part of how I describe my business more clearly would be nice.

Other gardeners ask Emma about how she sets up the trailer; she feels like “it doesn’t look very slick, but it works”. She would like to show people how she sets things up so that they can see how much she can carry.

“If I laid it all out and they could see all the stuff I’m carrying, it probably would look like you can fit a lot in a small trailer. I think just making it more obvious that it’s part of my work would be good. And continuing with the links between that and the environment.”

To sum up, Emma says: “I feel super lucky that I got it all. Every time I go out to my shed with my own little key, I can't believe that I own all this. It’s amazing. I feel really lucky, cycling home in the sunshine. It’s brilliant. I’m very grateful to the fund and all the help I got to apply and everything too.”