Add it up

The profit-winning equation that also streamlines efficiency is rooted in offering more services, more value, more problem-solving. But there’s a balance when considering which offerings to include on the menu. Here’s how these three landscape companies determined which add-ons build the business, and what extras can break it.

Finding synergies

Lawn care and pest control are yin and yang. “The licensing you need for pest control coincide with some of the lawn care certifications in our state, so we were already able to apply products in the lawn for ant control for instance,” says Daniele Collinson, director of client experience at Blades of Green in Edgewater, Maryland, and Fairfax, Virginia.

When Blades of Green started, its focus was lawn care services — fertilization and weed control programs. Then, an industry colleague pointed out the missed opportunity. Pest control just made good sense. Adding the service would open up cross-selling opportunities, not to mention technicians could focus on efficiency by providing more than one offering on properties. By nature, this makes every job more profitable.

“We were already using some pesticides with our lawn care programs, so we got the additional certifications required and eventually acquired a pest control company — and that owner still works for us today, 13 years later,” Collinson says.

With the acquisition, Blades of Green could market its pest control services to existing lawn care clients, and vice versa.

At first, technicians were dedicated to lawn care or pest control. But gradually, Blades of Green began cross-training its people. “That improves efficiency, and with the rising cost of goods, products and gasoline, it’s a great way to not increase prices for customers while saving on labor and expenses,” Collinson says. “Our technicians are able to get much more done production/revenue-wise with less drive time.”

Also, Blades of Green can create career paths. “Now, technicians can gain additional skills and certifications, making them even more valuable to the company — so we pay them more,” she says. “It gives them ownership over their pay increases and allows them to expand their capabilities.”

When adding on services, Blades of Green listens to its customers. And the company considers its existing labor pool. “If you can’t use your existing employees to perform a new service, what does it look like to hire from the outside?” Collinson says. “For us, we want to add services we can do in conjunction with our existing offerings. Our service model is to be efficient, so it has to line up with our service menu.”

This is how plant health care and mole control came to be. “We already have the pest control side, and moles can be destructive to lawns,” Collinson says. “While technicians were walking the lawns they were treating, they were feeling the mole tunnels and noticing damage.”

The service was relatively low-capital to launch. “There is no set equipment, per se, and we use a combination of different products and traps,” Collinson says. “There was some trial and error to get the right mix of when to use products, traps or both.”

The company’s experienced pest control technicians applied their knowledge to researching how moles operate, different mole tunnel types, and where to target — feeding tunnels vs. pass-through spaces. Then, they shared the information with the rest of the team. “We have a successful program now,” Collinson says.

Seasonality and truck setup are also considerations when adding a service to the mix. Blades of Green has considered how it could sustain employment for more of its team members during the off-season. But again, it has to be a true fit.

“We do not service properties from Christmas until about Feb. 15 and technicians take a temporary layoff,” Collinson says. “A couple people have asked us, ‘Why don’t you do holiday lighting?’ but those need to go up in November and our technicians are still producing lawn care at that time. So, while taking down lights in January and February would be great, it wouldn’t help us in December.”

Ultimately, Blades of Green’s add-on strategy is what Collinson describes as a “wheel and spoke” approach. Services are interconnected and roll into each other. And because customers’ agreements usually include more than one offering, they are inevitably more loyal. “It results in higher retention,” Collinson says. “If we are doing five services for you, there is more value because we are solving many problems.”

Stacking the deck

Once a traditional, modest-sized landscaping company performing new installs, renovations and some pruning, Saluda Hill Landscapes has evolved into a major production landscaping, grounds management and design/build player in South Carolina during its 32 years in business.

“While technicians were walking the lawns they were treating, they were feeling the mole tunnels and noticing damage.”

– Daniele Collinson, director of client experience at Blades of Green

“Over the years, our company has grown through spinoffs within the developer world and now we can stack services based on their needs,” says Wendell Furtick, president of the Lexington, South Carolina-based firm.

Saluda Hill completes about 250 new home landscape installations every month. It operates three divisions: production landscaping, design/build and grounds maintenance. And over the years, the company has expanded like an accordion file, strategically adding more pockets to the service portfolio so clients do not have to go elsewhere.

Rewinding to the late 1990s, Furtick says tract home builders in South Carolina’s midlands were developing large plots of land. “We saw that as something sustainable that could keep us busy without having to reach out for work all the time,” he says.

The company began developing relationships with these developers, which resulted in creating a production landscape division. “That’s all those crews did,” Furtick says. “We got pretty proficient at that and outfitted our crews alike. They have the same truck, skid-steer loader, trencher attachment and other tools so we can focus on that work — and at the same time, we were doing other traditional landscape jobs.”

Production landscaping grew exponentially through the 2000s with more communities cropping up across the region. “There was also a need from our builder base to offer community grounds maintenance, so we launched that division specifically for HOA work,” Furtick says.

HOA grounds maintenance uncovered more opportunity in this market: design/build projects for community entrances. This division is run like a separate business under the Saluda Hill umbrella with its own crews, equipment and management. “The initial focus was to provide turnkey community entrance design, build and installation to meet client’s needs,” Furtick says, estimating hundreds of completed projects of this nature. Because of what entrance projects entail, Saluda Hill has in-house graphic design services for community logos, in-house masons who build monuments and a lighting division that illuminates entrances and amenity centers.

Today, production landscaping is about 60% of the overall business, with 30% falling in the design/build division and about 10% in grounds maintenance.

Grounds maintenance accounts include the metropolitan airport and high-end commercial properties. As for the traditional landscaping that Saluda did when it started, homeowner projects need to be at least $10,000 in value.

So how does a company driven largely by production landscaping deal with a market slowdown? While 2021 and 2022 posted record growth in that arena, there was a drag in business in January 2023 due to rising interest rates that skyrocketed home values in the area, Furtick says.

“Our reaction to that was to reallocate some of our team into other areas of the business that were booming at the time,” Furtick says, pointing to grounds maintenance, its fastest growing division today. Also, Saluda Hill leveraged its loyal customer base, inquiring about nearby development opportunities and then branched out into neighboring markets including Augusta, Aiken and Florence.

Innovation also drives add-ons at Saluda Hills. A couple of years ago, the company created a custom app for quality control and dedicated two team members to the role. “Within 48 hours of installing a landscape, they go through the checklist of items and we capture pictures of the irrigation operating, installed sod and so on,” Furtick says.

“The initial focus was to provide turnkey community entrance design, build and installation to meet client’s needs.”

– Wendell Furtick, president, Saluda Hill Landscapes

“So, say six months after a purchase, the homeowner doesn’t water their lawn and says, ‘The grass was dead when I moved in,’ our developer customers can go into the cloud-based app and retrieve those pictures and say, ‘This is what the lawn looked like when you bought it.’ It doesn’t generate extra revenue for us, but it saves us a lot in what could be perceived warranty work and our customers love it,” he says.

Saluda Hill gained contracts for seven new properties after rolling out the app. “Developers like that reassurance,” Furtick says.

Not every service is a fit. Years ago, Saluda Hill forayed into the silt fence business for soil stabilization. “It’s just a different type of work and something where we couldn’t executive it with pride as a quality product,” Furtick says.

However, the company is currently adding on soil stabilization and erosion control services. Some developers expressed frustration with their current providers. “We acquired some direct seeding equipment and while we didn’t really want to get into it because of the specialized tools, it pays for itself and it’s a respond to customer demand,” Furtick explains.

Meanwhile, internal add-ons that aren’t exactly profit centers do help the business run efficiently and cost-effectively. Saluda Hill has its own nursery and on-site mechanic shop for servicing equipment and vehicles. In-house landscape architects and masons allow the company to maintain quality control and offer the full-service package to customers with a single point of contact.

Investments in equipment like ride-on lawn care applicators for fertilization and weed control also improve efficiency and allow Saluda Hill to deliver on its quality promise. “Along the way, we have not been shy with experimenting with new types of equipment to help us do a better job,” Furtick says, adding that installation crews use hydraulic, self-propelled rollers for sod installation. “It helps us make sure we have good sod-soil contact, and it smooths out the surface. Our customers love it — the lawns look impressive.”

But the best equipment in the world won’t make up for a poor operator. “You need to have the right people on board,” Furtick says.

Through the years, Saluda Hill has been focused on finding great people to fuel its growing divisions. “We have been very intentional about promoting our culture during the last 10 years,” Furtick says, adding they run employee appreciation breakfasts and a quality-based incentive program to attract talent. “We want to be a destination employer — where people come for a career,” Furtick says.

Word of bonus opportunities passes around. “We have outpaced competitors by paying well and that is a productivity-quality combination,” Furtick says of how the company can earmark those reward dollars. “It attracts people who want to do quality work.”

An open book approach helps managers and team members understand where the company stands and their role in achieving goals. “At the end of the day, as the company does well, everyone does well.”

Making sales merry

During a slow-down in the summer of 1995 for the design/build side of Burkholder Bros. in Malvern, Pennsylvania, brothers and co-owners Mark and Barry Burkholder decided to dip into irrigation.

“I went to a supplier, they explained it, I rented a pipe puller, and it probably took three days to complete a job that would take us a day now,” says Mark, co-owner and general manager. “But we are both mechanical, so it wasn’t that difficult to figure out.”

They decided to brand the division Sir Sprinkler as a business under the Burkholder parent company. “At the time, there were irrigation companies and landscape companies, but not both,” Mark explains. “We didn’t want to look like a landscape company doing sprinklers, which is why we made the trade name. Over time, it merged.”

“It was Mark and I back in the trenches, so it really took us away from the core business. So, make sure you know who is going to manage (a division) and plan the staffing before jumping into a service.”

– Barry Burkholder, co-owner, Burkholder Bros.

There was a comfort factor for clients when they saw a Sir Sprinkler truck pull into the driveway. They were getting a pro. So, the company retains this brand. “It also helped that if another landscaper that doesn’t offer irrigation was doing a project on the property, we wouldn’t be stepping on their feet,” Barry says. “We are respected as a company they can trust who will not steal their work. It’s a partnership.”

Three years ago, the company added plant health care services. The Burkholders hired a recruiter to find the right person to run the division. Team members who perform these services are certified arborists with field experience. “Where the mulch beds end and the grass starts, we stop,” Mark says of the focus on plants, not turf.

Burkholder Bros. acquired specialty rigs to equip the plant health care division — split tank trucks with built-in shelving storage. The company steers away from major tree jobs but performs corrective pruning.

Eventually in 2006, the company entered the grounds maintenance arena and became the fourth LandOpt licensee in 2007. “It enabled us to scale and create a system, and financially it has helped us develop financial plans and grow,” Barry says.

Maintenance was a natural segue for the firm. “We’d complete projects, people loved us and we never did the maintenance before, so it would continue service for clients,” Mark says. “On the other hand, if they are maintenance clients who have a project in mind, we can help.”

While the Burkholder Bros. business is diverse, “we stick to what we know,” Mark says.

They’ve learned add-on lessons the hard way. “We added pools before starting landscape maintenance, but when the economy went down in 2008 and 2009, the pool division was too distracting for us,” Mark says.

Barry adds, “It was Mark and I back in the trenches, so it really took us away from the core business. So, make sure you know who is going to manage (a division) and plan the staffing before jumping into a service.”

Meanwhile, the purchase of their current building in 2016 introduced another retail service opportunity that boosts brand recognition. The property they found was an abandoned garden center and included nine acres. The brothers fixed up the property and relocated to the site. They leased part of the space to a seasonal garden center. A few years into their time there, the Burkholders decided to sell Christmas trees.

“We occupy the garden center space during the off-season—and over the years, my wife started buying ornaments and gifts to sell along with the trees,” Mark says.

The shop opens after Halloween, and Christmas trees arrive during Thanksgiving weekend. They create a family experience with food trucks and live reindeer at the “grand finale” toward the end of December.

Generally, they sell about 600 trees, and the business has grown as families continue a Burkholder Bros. holiday tradition. Of course, estimating how many trees to order can be tricky. “The first year, we decided to order way too many, and we scaled back the next year,” Mark says.

Finding tree suppliers is more challenging. “Last year, I gambled because the only way to get more trees was to buy another truckload,” Mark says.

He has reached out to most suppliers along the East Coast to source trees, with the main supplier located in Pennsylvania. “The cost for Burkholder Bros. has quadrupled during the last five years. “If you want to make money on the trees, having the Christmas shop adds up to help make a good profit,” Mark says.

The company will continue its seventh season selling trees this year.

“It’s very well-known in the area,” Barry says. Plus, they earn landscape business from guests who enter the holiday-dressed design center and see photos of completed projects reeling on the big screen. “The slideshow draws questions and interest from Christmas shoppers,” he says.

The author is a freelance writer based in Ohio.