Demand, competition high to create lush, attractive greenery
(01/16/2006 Ft. Myers News Press, Business Monday Section)
By Dick Hogan
Originally posted on January 16, 2006
A lush, perfect, 12-month-a-year lawn is part of the Florida dream — creating a $743 million payroll for the landscaping industry in Florida alone.
But experts say hiring a landscaper who can accomplish that is easier said than done.
\"Their problem is they don\'t have the time,\" said Stephen Brown, a horticulture agent with the Lee County Extension Service. \"There are some people with 80 accounts, and that\'s 80 sites they have to visit. They may have only two persons plus them in a crew: a three-man crew. If you have 80 accounts, some once a week, some every other week, 10 miles apart in some cases, you don\'t have much time. I\'m not knocking the industry, I\'m just pointing out some facts.\"
Blake Crawford, president of Crawford Landscaping Group in Naples, said it\'s tough to differentiate yourself from the competition. \"They\'re almost buying you as opposed to buying the service.\"
He moved to this area a year and a half ago, drawn by the year-round demand for landscaping and a robust housing market creating new opportunities. Florida is second only to California for landscaping, with 36,701 employees working in 5,795 establishments in 2002, according to the U.S. Census. Overall, it\'s a $37.9 billion industry.
Crawford tries to set his operation apart by offering a more sophisticated approach: He sends out specialized crews to handle different parts of the job. \"We have two different crews. One shows up and mows and blows, like everybody else, but every two weeks a horticultural team comes out\" to do the upkeep on trees and other plants.
Prices vary widely depending on the level of expertise, said Jonathan Bardzik, director of industry marketing for the Washington-based American Nursery & Landscape Association.
Crawford said he charges \"an average of $300 a month\" for a typical home with some in the $200 range and some ranging up to $700 or $800 depending on how big and complicated the lawn is.
Exotic turfs such as zoysia grass need to be hand mowed and can also add to the expense, he said.
Bardzik said the landscaping industry is a complicated mosaic of companies ranging from tiny operations with one pickup truck to national firms that specialize in major commercial buildings.
\"I think for residential, it\'s primarily local,\" he said. \"Then in the commercial sector, if we\'re talking about installation projects, the larger the projects the more likely it is to be national.\"
The TruGreen division of Downers Grove, Ill.-based ServiceMaster, for example, handles residential and commercial landscaping projects of all sizes.
The difference between professional and amateur can be a fine line, however. \"Because there\'s not a state license requirement, it\'s very easy to get in the business,\" said Merry Mott, director of industry certifications for the Florida Nursery Growers and Landscape Association.
The association offers certifications for a certified horticulture professional plus more advanced certifications as landscape technicians, contractors and designers with more specialized skills required.
But three years of practical experience are required for someone even to sit for the exams, she said. \"Some of it you really don\'t know for a few years\" — for example, knowing how to plant a tree by watching how it does for a year or so in the ground.
Also, she said, \"It\'s really important to look at all the basic things they need for business also: workers\' compensation, and being licensed for applying pesticides by the state,\" which requires certification for anyone who sprays pesticides.
Marybeth Shirey, co-owner of Riverland Nursery & Landscaping in east Fort Myers, has been in business for 21 years and said her operation has become more specialized over the years. \"We\'re retail/wholesale, selling to landscapers and the retail market,\" she said. \"We don\'t do installation at all. We used to. It\'s a lot of work, you have to have a lot of manpower to keep a lot of people busy.\"
Now, Shirey said, she sells service: a horticulturist is on staff at all times and \"she can tell you what, when and why.\"
Riverland also will go out to a client\'s house. \"We\'ll do consultations, look at the plants, where the sun hits them.\"
But providing plants has hassles of its own, she said. When a severe cold snap hit in 1985, for example, \"We ran sprinklers all day long. We had icicles hanging from our greenhouse that were 8 or 10 feet long.\"
People can protect a sensitive plant from freezing by running water over it, she said, but \"You can\'t turn it off until the ice melts off it the next morning.\"
Bardzik said that even as some landscapers become more specialized, the broader trend is in the opposite direction.
\"In the past you had retail garden centers and the professional landscaper who, even if in the same company, was pretty much separate,\" he said. \"The clientele was treated as a separate client base.\"
Now, he said, some garden centers are adding landscaping services and some landscapers are opening garden centers. \"They are doing a better job of hanging all those activities together.\"
Crawford said he\'s cautious about expanding his focus too much. \"What I don\'t want to do is do something I don\'t do very well.\" So far he\'s concentrated on building a maintenance department and then added pest control and irrigation — now he\'s getting into commercial landscaping.
He\'s had awhile to consider his business model, having started his first landscaping company as a junior in high school in Grosse Pointe, Mich.
\"I had a guidance counselor who kept joking with me,\" Crawford said, because he was driving his lawn equipment around on a trailer pulled by his father\'s expensive Audi 5000 sedan.
