20 Years of Lawn & Landscape

The very first issue of Lawn & Landscape didn’t even bear that title. In our early years, we were actually known as American Lawn Applicator (ALA), and approximately 2,500 lawn care operators nationwide read the opening editorial from Steve Brown. Amazingly enough, many of the words from that editorial resonate loudly today.

“On one hand we see the continued growth and maturity of many chemical lawn care companies. There are constant refinements of techniques and equipment. New materials which promise to solve many of the old problems are introduced regularly. Educational programs and professional associations have raised standards and contributed to a widespread “professional” attitude toward this business. And, most importantly, the American homeowner continues to perceive the value of our existence.

“However, there is the other hand to reckon with. The opposing forces of inflation and recession put a tremendous strain on the economy. The costs of money, chemicals, labor and fuel climb to an unbelievable rate. The disappearance of chemicals such as Silvex reduces our effectiveness. Governmental regulations … complicate and frustrate. Chemical companies talk about the fast approaching day when they won’t be able to afford to develop new pesticides for our market. Construction of new homes has slowed to a crawl. And, finally, lawn care people have begun to question whether our increased costs can be passed along indefinitely to a consumer who, pressed from all sides, may have some difficult choices.”

Aside from the slowdown of new home construction and economic ills, our industry can relate well to all of these issues, and we’ve uncovered some new ones of our own such as the painful labor shortage and the effects of consolidation.

To help us discuss what the last 20 years have meant to the landscape industry, we asked four industry veterans to share their thoughts.

Ron Kujawa, Kujawa Enterprises

Ron Kujawa’s career in the landscape industry dates back to 1969, and he takes obvious delight setting the record straight when he encounters someone who has misperceptions about landscape companies.

“Significant progress has really been made over the last two decades to professionalize this industry, and that is probably the most significant thing that has happened in that time,” he said. “But I think there is still a long way to go before the general public recognizes and appreciates the contributions of our industry.”

Kujawa spoke of one instance where he recommended a landscape company to a general contractor and that contractor was amazed to learn that the landscape company had greater bonding capacity. “There are still a lot of people who consider many of the service industries as lesser industries compared to some of the more high-tech industries out there,” he pointed out. “This has been a general, incremental evolution with computerization, new equipment, certification and other products. And I think we’re going to see more focus within schools on educating people for industries that involve working with your hands because there is such a need for those employees right now.”

And, as many industry observers have commented before, the development of national landscape companies like LandCare USA, now part of TruGreen LandCare, can go a long way to legitimize this industry in the eyes of financial professionals. “We are producing companies that show that this is a viable and growing industry and not just a bunch of mom-and-pop companies,” he remarked. “Although we know what this industry is like, the general public doesn’t see this. I think as more companies grow and become regional and national companies, the facility and property managers will recognize our sophistication and talents.”

All of this should be good news for independent contractors curious about the next 20 years. “I think the people who choose to remain private businesses will become much better business people in the next five to 10 years because they will have to rise to the challenge that consolidation has presented,” Kujawa related. “Part of that will probably include contractors becoming a little choosier in terms of what clients they want to take on and what type of services they want to offer because they’ll have to make sure they allocate their financial resources where they can get the most return.”

Kujawa was also quick to point out the improvements in power equipment that have occurred in the last two decades and the benefits from these changes to contractors. “Again, we’re seeing a continual evolutionary improvement instead of a radical breakthrough that changes the industry,” he noted. “The mowers of 20 years ago were 18- to 20-horsepower with air-cooled gasoline engines, and now we’ve got more horsepower and water-cooled diesel engines that run better and last longer.

“Then the industry developed the front-mount mowers and the zero-turn machines, which boosted productivity for the operators,” Kujawa continued. “The machines we use are also much more durable today and they can use so many more attachments to do so much more work.”

Larry Messina, Lawn Cure of Southern Indiana

The lawn care industry has undoubtedly seen its fair share of change over the last 20 years, although not all of the motivation came from within the industry. Larry Messina started his company 23 years ago, and he is very aware of how little his business today resembles the company that he initially created.

“Lawn care companies have really diversified,” he noted. “We all got started in the industry with a tank and a spray truck and we made four lawn care applications each year, but no one is doing just that today. We have branched off into industrial weed control, which was about 26 percent of our revenue last year, and we now offer tree and shrub care, aeration and perimeter pest control.

“One lesson I’ve learned over these 20 years is that if you’re not staying on top of the trends in the industry and what’s going on with the new technologies, you’ll end up going by the wayside,” he continued. “All of these add-on services might seem like pretty small incremental improvements, but they do affect the bottom line and cumulatively, the effect can be significant.”

In addition to developing an appreciation for the profitability benefits of maximizing revenue per customer, Messina said lawn care operators have also benefited from advances in the products they work with in order to diversify in this manner.

“I didn’t even know what an aerator was when I started this company, but these manufacturers were smart enough to see an emerging industry and they developed the equipment we needed to be successful,” he explained. “Another example is the riding spreaders that let operators spray and spread at the same time and improve productivity by as much as double.”

Of course, significant change in the lawn care industry has focused around the pesticides lawn care operators apply on a daily basis. “I think the whole theory of integrated pest management (IPM) has perked lawn care operators’ interest and now we see that we need to be smarter, not only from a bottom-line standpoint but for the sake of the environment as well,” Messina noted, adding that he’s applying considerably less pesticides on a per-acre basis today than he was two decades ago. “We used to go out and make a blanket application of an insecticide on our third application for all of our properties. We would never do that today. In fact, today we only apply insecticides on an as-needed basis.”

Gary Thornton, Slice Technologies

There may not be a better symbol of the impact technology has had on the landscape industry than Gary Thornton, who got started in the landscape industry in 1961 with the development of Thornton Landscape, which later became part of his father’s company, Thornton Gardens.

Then, in 1999, Thornton sold the company to focus more on his other business, Slice Technologies, which produces computer software for the landscape industry.

“I think we bought our first computer in 1979, and we were probably one of the first landscape companies to do so,” Thornton pointed out. “Everything used to be done in a ‘by-the-seat-of-the-pants’ fashion. Accounting and job costing programs for service industries didn’t exist and just having a chart of accounts was a big deal. We’re still far behind other industries for the routine and mundane parts of operating a business, but I think we’ll see continued computerization of this industry until the computer becomes the hub for all written and verbal communication.”

But that’s not to say Thornton hasn’t seen other important changes take place during the last two decades. “The other major change that has taken place, and it might have occurred because of computers, education, the economy, magazines like yours and associations, has been the development of professionalism in the industry,” he related. “We used to be a mom-and-pop operation. We are now a much more legitimate business.

“Years ago, the real businesses were the oddities in our industry, but now you have to be a real business or you won’t last long,” he continued. “That was a drastic change, and it was a change that was absolutely mandatory. If that sense of professionalism didn’t develop, there wouldn’t have been any consolidation over the last few years and landscape contractors would all still have that pickup-truck mentality.”

Another change Thornton observed and was also able to benefit from was what he termed “the growth of design/build projects.”

“There always used to be some design/build jobs, but they didn’t represent the dollar volume or prestigious projects that they do today,” he recalled. “Today’s design/build work is mind boggling, especially when you look at what is going on in subdivisions with lakes, walkways, lighting, irrigation, street trees, entranceways – the whole project.”

Thornton said this development of design/build work has been one of the drivers behind the increased diversification of the industry. “Irrigation wasn’t even thought of on most projects in Ohio 20 years ago because supplemental irrigation really isn’t necessary for plants to live here,” he related. “But as we began to work with more national customers, such as McDonald’s or Midas Muffler, they expected irrigation to be on all of their properties. And more customers began appreciating the marketing value of a nice-looking property. Burned out lawns weren’t acceptable in the summer anymore.”

And what do the next 20 years hold? “I think the biggest changes we’ll see in the future will have to do with mowing, which is probably the dumbest thing we do on a weekly basis because it’s so labor intensive and time consuming,” Thornton explained. “We need to come up with a better way to make turf look good without mowing it every week.

“This could come from a difference in equipment design if we can eliminate the need for a mower operator. This could come from genetics with the development of a turfgrass that doesn’t have to be mowed, or it could come from a change in design philosophies with less use of turf,” he added. “But when you think about how many hours and dollars are spent chopping the tops off of blades of grass, the numbers are mind boggling. There is enough expense there that someone will eventually find a way to produce savings.”

Bob Ottley, One Step Tree & Lawncare

From start to finish and back again. That’s the idea behind a cycle, and that’s exactly what Bob Ottley said he sees the lawn care industry in the midst of right now in terms of the companies that comprise the industry.

“When we all started out 20 years ago, we were a bunch of little landscape or lawn care companies, and the people who decided to stick with the industry, join associations and turn themselves into real professionals are still around, for the most part,” Ottley observed. “Of course, we lost a number of these folks through the consolidation in the industry, and we ended up with one mega-company and some fairly large regional green industry companies that have thrived.

“Now, what I think we’re seeing everywhere, is a number of new companies coming into the industry again,” he continued. “I don’t know whether these people are former lawn care owners, former lawn care employees or just new entrepreneurs entering the industry for the first time, but I think we’re seeing a real resurgence in the number of these new companies.”

Ottley said that while he would still classify the lawn care industry as a young industry, he thinks the completion of this business cycle indicates the industry has at least matured to some degree. And he isn’t concerned that having one company so much larger than the rest of the industry creates a problem. Instead, he is confident that the growth of TruGreen-ChemLawn has been good for other lawn care companies.

“First of all, there are a lot of people out there that don’t want to do business with the largest, national company in an industry,” Ottley related. “Instead, they would rather work with a more local interest, and then the older companies who are established in a market look attractive to these customers because these companies have stability and credibility in the market.

“But I think TruGreen-ChemLawn has come along and taught so many customers through their direct mail and telemarketing exactly why they need to have their lawn taken care of by a professional lawn care company, and that helps us all.”

Ottley also recognized that considerable changes have taken place with lawn care equipment, and this has largely been driven by the concept of integrated pest management (IPM), which has come to prominence within the last two decades.

“We’ve made a big push to change our approach to applications because of IPM, and that has made us modify our equipment and use more twin-line hoses, injection spray guns and trucks with two tanks,” he explained. “All of that change has brought some new problems as well because the spray equipment is more complicated to operate, is more technical and requires more technician training before operation.”

Despite the added challenges, Ottley refuses to be critical of the notion of IPM, and he looks forward to the day when the majority of lawn care operators adhere to it. “As a whole, I don’t think the industry has caught on to the idea of IPM yet,” he said. “In some cases, whether or not you follow IPM depends on the market you’re in because some of them are much more sensitive to pesticide use than others.

“But following an IPM approach makes dealing with anti-pesticide groups much easier because then you explain to them how you protect the environment instead of just making blanket applications, which is exactly what they think we all do.”

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