‘Lettuce’ celebrate 10 years of our South West Workshop

It might have started out as “the garden shed,” but ten years on, our South West Workshop is anything but small.

This May marked a decade since the Bunbury-based team opened the doors to what was, at the time, a tiny workshop in a former window manufacturing shed.

“There was nothing available across the whole area,” recalled Mark Holdman, who played a key role in getting the branch off the ground. Mark, at that time, was the Site Manager, but has since become the South West Area Manager.

“Then we heard Dowell Windows were moving out of their shed, so I got in touch with their general manager and asked if we could do a deal.”

And just like that, the South West Workshop was born, powered by a small team, no three-phase power, and a whole lot of grit, based out on Halifax Drive in Davenport.

With a tiny lunchroom-turned-office, a compact meeting room, and barely any yard space, it wasn’t long before the place earned a cheeky nickname among locals: the Monadelphous Garden Shed.

Mark took the joke in his stride, and straight to the soil.

“I planted a veggie patch out the front,” he laughed.

“We even had a bit of a competition with admin over who could grow the best zucchinis.”

Behind the veggie wars and humble beginnings was a determined vision to create a local presence that could support major operations across the South West.

In the early days, the team maintained a steady turnover. By 2024, that amount had surged to more than ten times its original value. The growth has been, in Mark’s words, “phenomenal.”

Mark credits everything that’s been achieved to the dedication of his teammates.

“I had a dream of what I wanted, but it’s the team that achieved it and built what we are today,” Mark said.

In 2020, the team moved into their bigger current workshop on Merchant Street. With proper power supply and enough offices to accommodate their growing workforce.

Despite leaving the zucchinis behind, the team's roots have only deepened. What started as a determined leap of faith in a window shed has evolved into a thriving operation, firmly embedded in the South West for the last decade.