Entrepreneur of the Week is a weekly column to showcase a successful business person in Aiken and share their success story in order to help grow entrepreneurship in the Aiken area.
SK Garden Designs owner, Susan Kleinbub has been helping clients create beautiful gardens in Aiken since the early 1990s and has 100s of projects – large and small – in her portfolio. She loves being in on the ground floor of new projects, working with the home owner and contractors to implement a beautiful vision for her clients.
Susan has always had a love affair with plants, flowers and trees. Born in New York but raised in Aiken, she remembers spending summers in New York and then returning to Aiken for the school year. One summer she returned and jumped on her bicycle, looking to see what the neighborhood kids were up to. She physically stopped riding down the street, stunned, at the beauty and size of the oak trees in her neighborhood. That was something she just did not see in New York in the summer. Her passion was born!
After graduating from Aiken High School, Susan went to Clemson University. She loved going to the botanical gardens while at Clemson and truly enjoyed her college experience. Clemson at the time did not offer Landscape Design as a degree. Susan graduated with a degree in Horticulture. She took a jobs in Atlanta and Austin in the Landscape Design industry where she learned what she didn’t get at Clemson on a daily basis. She eventually was able to branch out on her own and start her own small business, SK Garden Designs. She specializes in Landscape Design for residential, commercial and industrial.
There are many advantages to her job. Susan loves the flexibility of being able to raise a family by setting her own schedule. She gets to be creative daily. She loves meeting new people and brainstorming with them about their design. Susan loves to connect her clients with nature. Her favorite part about working in Aiken is the small town feel and how word of mouth travels fast. She never has invested in advertising because she gets jobs by referrals. She has a lot of history and memories of Aiken and loves being around those memories with her family.
Susan wants to encourage anyone thinking of starting a small business the importance of building a team. Build a team that you can rely on and one that can help you whenever you need the extra help. In addition, be financially savvy- set money aside for times when you do not have quite as much work!
Fun Facts
- Susan’s father, Scottie Schulhofer , won the Belmont. Susan always dreamed of becoming a jockey when she was a child.
- Susan has never been afraid to get dirt under her fingernails. She has always been a tomboy and credits her 2 sisters for helping her with her feminine side.
- Susan has been in business 30 plus years.
Contact Susan Kleinbub- SK Garden Designs at 803-599-2257
I’m a 5th generation Aikenite who loves interior design, history, family, College Sports (yeah, you know my team) and of course my new puppy Duckett, The German Shorthaired Pointer.