Three things you need to know about Toby: He likes bad jokes, good wine and tea as it comes.

Toby grew up on a farm in Durham, driving tractors and learning to work hard and be resourceful from a young age. Horses were almost members of the family and he became an accomplished horseman, competing at national level.

He always dreamed of being able to go into the farming industry and, following a year farming in Australia after leaving school, went to agricultural college.

Very soon, he realised that he might need a plan B. It was the mid 1990s and becoming increasingly clear that farming was changing dramatically. Toby also realised that being the youngest child, he had no direct route into agriculture.

Encouraged by an uncle who worked for a civil engineering company, he decided to change direction. He started studying civil engineering, working as he studied.

Toby cut his teeth in heavy civils, doing everything from 20-metre-deep drainage projects in Northumberland, to being a projects manager responsible for foundations and setting out bolt jigs for  multi level tower blocks. On one job, he was setting out piling one day and walls the next. It was a great grounding.

He travelled around working for some of the big firms – Seymour Civils, Kajima, Carillion and Balfour – before moving to Islay, to join a team constructing ferry terminals, jettys and link spans for CalMac ferries.

It was while he was in the Inner Hebrides that he was offered a job in Jersey with Charles Le Quesne. It wasn’t what he expected, and he moved back into civils before being recruited to work on government capital housing projects.

From there, following a short period freelancing, he was asked to help turn around a facilities company. It was here that he met Neil and decided to join him at Premier Landscaping in 2019. Within a year and a half, they’d founded Naturalis and bought The Small Pool Company.