Skip to content

Author: Landscape Management

One very expensive mowing lesson

While I enjoy playing 9 holes from time to time, I’m not a good golfer. I usually play at a local municipal course. My favorite hole is #5, a long par-5 with an expansive fairway that’s pretty difficult to miss. Even by me. But I miss it on occasion nevertheless, and, a couple of years […]

Reel Earth-friendly mowing

Despite relocating their business from Seattle to Meridian, Idaho, a couple of teenage boys are finding success with an environmentally friendly landscape company. From the Idaho Statesman:Last year, while living in Seattle, Blake, 17, and Brandon Skenandore, 16, started Join Earth Green, a zero-emission lawn care business, which is green-speak for “people-powered push reel lawn […]

Brickman employees die in bus accident

Two Brickman employees died in a freak accident on a sightseeing bus on July 11. The Loudon Times reported the story: Josh Stoll, 24, of Sterling, and Mike Feiock, 35, of Centreville, struck a metal rod under the 11th Street overpass as the sightseeing bus headed down Dwight D. Eisenhower Freeway from a tailgating party […]

Fert prices going higher, higher

I hope that Wayne Horman of Scotts Turf-Seed is wrong but I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Horman was quoted in The Capital Times newspaper (Madison, WI) as predicting that the price of fertilizer is going to skyrocket.He said that urea has gone from costing $200 a ton last year to $790 a […]

More good deeds

I don’t think this industry get’s enough credit for all the good work it does. Not only do landscapers and lawn care operators keep our lawns looking beautiful, but the people who make up this industry continue to be extremely generous. There’s Green Care for Troops, our recent post about Hope In Bloom, and now […]

Hope in Bloom for cancer patients

Here’s an article featuring a landscape professional with a heart of gold. It appeared in the Monday, June 23, issue of the Norwood, MA, Daily News Transcript. WALPOLE — Brenda Cooke is helping to change the landscape for local cancer patients – literally. She is a landscaper who has donated her time to a nonprofit […]

Congo put down after one attack too many

Congo the German shepherd made one attack too many — this one injuring and sending the 75-year-old mother of its owner to a hospital. Congo, of course, is the big dog that chewed up 42-year-old landscape worker, Giovanni Rivera, almost exactly a year ago. He and four other workers came to work on the property […]

A lighter look at water shortages

Last week California’s Governator declared the state was in an official drought and ordered water be transported to the driest areas. This is a very serious problem and could have a major impact on landscapers and others in the Green Industry. With that in mind, my favorite fake-news source, The Onion, provided a list of […]

J-1 visas and student workers just don’t cut it

I read with great interest a recent article in the Vineland (MA) Gazette that told how businesses on Martha’s Vineyard are surviving in spite of not getting all the H-2B seasonal guest workers they wanted. The headline suggested that the businesses have been able to hire enough employees for the tourist season in spite of […]

Sticking to his guns on an unpopular issue

Dan Gardner is a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen newspaper. To my knowledge Dan’s salary is not tied in any way to the agrichemical industry, and I suspect that the newspaper he works for is not dependent upon that same industry for advertising revenue. I can’t say that’s the case categorically since I don’t read […]

City’s refusal to ban pesticides just delays the inevitable

In the category of man bites dog in light of the near hysteria over lawn pesticide use that’s infected Canada, the council of Parry Sound, Ontario, turned down a proposal to ban the use of pesticides. The Parry Sound mayor cast the deciding vote. It seems that skunks and other critters have been tearing up […]

Clean Air Lawn Care getting killer press

Clean Air Lawn Care looks like it might take off. The lawn service company, which is based in Fort Collins, CO, uses electric and biodiesel-fueled equipment to run its equipment. Its maintenance equipment is charged during the day by solar panels mounted on its trucks and at night with conventional energy. The company has been […]

Better dead than in the red

Residents of Corona, CA are asking their city leaders to raise landscaping fees. In fact they’re trying to force the city into action. Apparently aan earlier effort to raise the fees was voted down. Instead of paying for extra maintenance, the city chose to let grass discolor and die. Some residents weren’t happy with that […]

Landscape thieves nab shrubs, gas

Several homes in Mukwonago, WI, have been targeted by thieves who are making away with trees, flowers and shrubs. According to Newsradio 620 in Wisconsin: Elsie Roth had her newly planted tress, shrubs and flowers dug up and stolen. 25 holes were found all around Roth’s condo complex. “Just a little bit surprised,” Roth said.  […]

Wow, this industry has lots of wage-hour violations

DES MOINES, IA — The feds are finding lots of wage violations among landscape/lawn service companies, says Percella Maupins, the wage hour district director for the U.S. Labor Department. In Iowa, 56% of the companies that have been checked have been in violation of wage-hour regulations. These include failure to comply with federal minimum wage […]

Tiny gas protest..hey, at least they made an effort

As protests go, this one is strictly small time. But it reflects what anybody who runs a route service business is feeling right now. Earl Humphreys who runs a small lawn care company called Lawn Boyz in eastern Tennessee organized a gas protest on May 5. He and a handful of owners and workers at […]

Manatees should be rescued, never eaten

Bert’s Bar & Grill in Matlacha, FL, is the kind of joint you would hope to stumble onto assuming you were lucky enough to stumble onto a real, old-time, authentic Florida fishing village. No high-rise condos. No gated, palm-lined communities with names like “Waiting for Heaven” or “Sunstroke Paradise.” No incredibly manicured golf course with […]

He turned in $140,000 in found money . . . and he’s still smiling

Eli Estrada, the 40-year-old landscaper who found $140,000 in unmarked $20s and turned it into police, is somewhat of a celebrity in Southern California. When the word got out about what he’d done, apparently he picked up some new accounts from people impressed with his honesty. It turns out the the dough was left on […]

Town says "no" to landscaper’s short green skirt

The United Press International reports that Jay Herrod, the professional landscaper that wears a short green skirt when he’s mowing, is going to have put on some pants. Officials in Clinton, LA, on Thursday, April 10, denied his request to wear the skirt while he’s working . . . oh, that awful nasty heat rash! […]

Woolly lawnmowers

The Guardian reports: In a bid to keep its municipal lawns trim while saving money, the city of Turin has done away with lawn mowers and brought in 700 sheep to graze in two parks. Turin police blocked roads last Thursday as the first flock moved in to tackle the Meisino park, part of a […]

News of the sublime . . .and the utterly ridiculous

This from the April 9, 2008, San Francisco Chronicle: It was a tempting sight for struggling landscaper Eli Estrada: a bag filled with $140,000 on a Cerritos street.There was his credit card debt, upcoming wedding and making ends meet with his artificial grass and landscaping business.But turning it over to Long Beach police last month […]

Congo cheats the executioner

Congo (aka “The Mauler”) will live. His life has been spared. Congo, as you may recall from previous blogs, is the German shepherd that chewed up a landscape worker that arrived in the early morning hours of June 5, 2007, to work on the 10-acre property in Princeton Township, NJ.The attack resulted in the Hispanic […]

Grounds guy wins $1 mil but stays on the job

Donald Nicholas, a seasonal grounds worker at a Staten Island cemetery, won $1 million in the New York Lottery this week. He will be paid $32,251 a year for the next 20 years. Nicholas moved to Staten Island from Harlem three years ago. He says he loves his job and has no plans to quit. […]

President Bush visiting Marty Grunder home

In his last year in office, President George W. Bush seems to have taken a big interest in the landscape industry. First, he visits Wright Manufacturing Inc. in Maryland where he does a nifty turn on a Wright Stander professional mower (“Fire this sucker up,” he’s reported as exclaiming.). And now he’s visiting the home […]

To top