Meet The Team

Philip Cotton and Jimmy Hibbert, both local Longparish residents, welcome you to Test Valley Garden Machinery.

With a wealth of history and reputation, this workshop has been helping service garden machinery in and around Andover and its surrounding villages since 1993. Philip and Jimmy are passionate about continuing to service all the workshop’s valuable customers and look after all the new ones. They are confident they can grow the business through particular attention to efficiency, professionalism, reliability and friendliness.

Test Valley Garden Machinery offers local customers a free pick up and drop off of their machines, a 1 week turnround, a mobile Andover mower repair service and will never mowingly be undercut! We are quickly gathering 5 Star Reviews.

Previously Jimmy Founded Dress2kill Ltd one of London’s leading bespoke tailors. James has been making suits for the world of politics, sport, television and business since 2000. In 2005, James featured in Startups “Growing Business Young Guns: Class of 2005” entrepreneur list, as well as being awarded Finalist in the Ernst and Young “Entrepreneur of the Year” awards. Founder of various fundraising charities, James has raised over a million pounds with his ‘out of-the-box’ thinking. James sits on the board of “Walking with the Wounded” and founded their annual charity fundraiser “Walking Home for Christmas.”

James is also a Founder and Director of Ride of the Lions who organise fundraising bike rides using many celebrities from the world of rugby. Jimmy is passionate about service levels and efficiency and believes there is a huge opportunity to improve the whole Garden Machinery offering. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his family and watching rugby.

Philip has been successfully working in the Shipbroking Business specialising in tanker chartering for the last 35years mainly based in the City of London.

In 1993 he and 2 colleagues formed Petrian shipbrokers Ltd that ran successfully for over 18 years. For the last 10 years he has been working with ICAP which then joined forces with Howe Robinson.

After a hugely successful career and having lived near Andover with his family for the last 16 years Philip saw a gap in the market with a good friend to set up a garden machinery business and in 2021 Test Valley Garden Machinery was born. He is a keen tennis player and plays most weeks throughout the year, plus he enjoys mowing his lawn.

Meet James Martin. James is not a chef (just in case you were thinking). He comes to the business with a broad knowledge of all things mechanical. Quick and highly efficient, James is a perfectionist in what he does. In his spare time James likes to tinker with cars and anything mechanical.