Local business owner, Elizabeth Shopland, has enjoyed giving back to the community she loves in a variety of ways. She has lived in the Columbia Valley for over 18 years, and is celebrating her 10th year in the business of nature-inspired living.
Banyan Tree Solutions, Shopland’s multi-faceted foray into the business world, is a hard company to nail down, as it includes both Shopland’s love of gardening and landscaping and her desire to help people achieve their life goals one step at a time.
Both a trained horticulturalist and solutions-focused life coach, Shopland said her decision to begin her entrepreneurial experiment occurred in 2000, when she grew tired of her previous career in management and started seeking a way to spend more time outdoors.
“Most people know me as Homefront Essentials Gardening. I have been working that end of the business for ten years and I have over 70 clients throughout the valley,” Shopland said.
In 2009, Shopland became a certified life coach, and has been helping clients reach their personal goals ever since. The two branches of Banyan Tree Solutions may seem completely unrelated at first, but for Shopland, they are both integral aspects of her desire to “appreciate and nurture the human spirit and the natural world we live in,” she said.
So as her business grows, Shopland said she believes it is very important to give back to the community in which she operates, and she has done so in a variety of ways.
On the personal growth end of things, she has supported coaching clients throughout the valley, worked with the College of the Rockies and is the driving force behind bringing in seminars and workshops to help others find out just what it is that makes them tick.
In terms of the gardening side of her business, Shopland has volunteered herself and her staff to the Groundswell greenhouse project, as well as work for the local Family Resource Centre and the Rotaries crossroads beautification project.
Looking forward, Shopland said she is excited to be able to help bring one of the premier personal growth and development companies, Klemmer and Associates, to the valley to offer two training workshops for residents.
“Often to get better results in our personal and professional lives, we need to improve our own personal leadership. Klemmer and Associates combines a grassroots approach with long lasting tools to really empower people to make a real difference in their own lives and the world around them.”
The workshops are part of Banyan Tree’s Landscape Your Life Personal Leadership Coaching program, and are in conjunction with the Columbia Valley Chamber of Commerce’s Women in Business group.
The first took place on January 15, and on February 8, 9 and 10, Klemmer and Associates’ international facilitator, Brian Miller will be at Copper Point Resort to facilitate a Personal Mastery Weekend. And stay tuned for the release of Shopland’s first book, entitled The S.a.g.e Garden, due out in June this year.
For more information on the workshops, or any aspect of Banyan Tree Solution’s variety of services, contact Shopland at 250-342-8978 or eshopland@telus.net, or visit www.btswellness.com.
