Get With The Program: Color Programs

Some landscapes burst with every color point on the spectrum, others blend a conservative selection of hues. Some are tailored, others whimsical. Color programs create a pinwheel of possibilities, and more contractors are finding that installing annuals, perennials and flowering grasses make landscapes blush.

In addition, color offers an array of benefits for clients - eye-candy for apartment tenants and curb-side appeal for homeowners. What’s more, color programs can put companies a shade above their competition, added Scott Carter, senior seasonal color designer, The Morrell Seasonal Color Group, a division of Omni Facility Services, Atlanta, Ga.

"There are so many office buildings and so many options for real estate and office space," he said. "Customers want to bring more attention to their properties. They want to say, ‘Look what we can offer you - a beautiful landscape when you come to work, great park areas and jogging trails.’ These are ways of bringing employees in. Color programs are amenities they can offer their clients."

This is why some contractors are dedicating and training crews, and selling and scheduling color - an add-on service many feel promises profits.

A BRIGHT ADDITION. Color programs are gaining popularity, and The Morrell Seasonal Color Group supports this trend with its 30 percent annual growth rate. People are looking for a splash of color and are boldly branching out beyond the traditional plant palate. "Most of our customers have gone from basic plant materials to wanting to see more exotic plant materials," Carter noted. "They try to beat other companies’ landscapes with something new on the market. They want to be first - they want something different before anyone else has it."

And in some cases, Carter’s commercial customers want their plant installations to be exclusive - the only one of its kind on the block. Most of the time, he will honor this. Summer offers limitless options for unusual selections, and sometimes the group will even incorporate interior plants in beds to add pizzazz, he added.

These originality seekers comprise roughly 30 percent of the color department’s customers, he estimated. The rest opt for the tried-and-true. Many color programs consist of a base selection of annuals and perennials and a set design, unless clients choose to alter the format. Greg Fracker, owner, Colorscapes by Design, Newark, Ohio, said most customers stick with standard red, white and pink plants and basic bed arrangements.

Whether eccentric or simple, more expendable income is allocated to landscapes as gardening tops American pastimes, noted Rachel Williams, client representative, garden services, Mariani Landscape, Lake Bluff, Ill. "[Color programs] are becoming almost a necessity for a lot of people," she noted. "It’s just something more that someone can have. Numerous Web sites and magazines have popped up recently, and they are giving people the opportunity to see what they can be doing to their properties."

This increased real estate value initiated many clients’ urges to add color. As Carter pointed out, visual impact carries a hefty resale value and attracts customers to shops, tenants to apartment complexes and employees to businesses. Color adds bonus points to a property, summarized Joe Burns, president, Color Burst, Atlanta, Ga.

"It’s not a basic necessity," he noted. "You’re generally selling first impressions."

SPECTRUM OF STAFF. These impressions take work, however. Every spring, Color Burst is a "madhouse." Man-power doubles and tasks multiply, as well, Burns said. To manage the spring installation rush, the company hires up to 50 extra full-time employees for its four branches to help pull up the old flowers and put in the new.

Training is a sort of an incremental puzzle for the company, as it gradually moves the new hires into positions of responsibility, Burns described. "We don’t double our size on day one - it takes us seven or eight days to double," he said. "We bring in a few at a time so we don’t have to train a whole mass - that would be a quality control nightmare.

"We bring them in a couple days ahead of time and teach them the basics," he continued. "When we start, the first week we won’t put them on crews. We’ll start the first crew and have the new people pulling up dead flowers or raking up old mulch. Then, we start them on grading the beds. Then, we move them up to positions where we can trust them."

Many employees return the following season, so there aren’t too many new technicians on board, Burns added. Seasonal workers easily build off of their skill base from the prior year - a helpful quality for any technician learning to install color programs, considering the variables associated with plant installation. Williams admitted most training challenges center on unpredictable factors that weather and changing seasons present.

"The weather changes, the garden changes," she explained, noting the importance of hands-on training to learn how to deal with these conditions. "Some of these gardens can be so dynamic that they change from week to week. Just the amount of information that is useful for maintenance is large."

On-site education is slightly improvisational, depending on the property’s conditions, and inevitably mixes a little botany with some plant identification, Williams added. And then there are the care-taking tidbits technicians pick up along the way that don’t appear in the pages of a textbook. "It’s getting the years of experience behind someone so that they can start making judgments," she noted.

This experience produces dedicated employees, specialized crewmembers and niche departments within landscape divisions that focus specifically on color.

More than potted plants and ornamentals, the garden services department at Mariani Landscape handles vegetable and perennial gardens, bulb installation and container design, Williams described. "We basically try to do more specialized garden design for our clients," she said.

The company’s color department is a subdivision of the landscape management branch and employs trained technicians to sell the special services. The client representatives are horticulturists with training in garden design, perennial maintenance and specialty garden maintenance. The dedicated crews are educated to install these special-order color programs, and the customers expect this professionalism, she said.

"Landscape management used to be all in one and we started to recognized the need to have a separate entity for garden installation," Williams said. "I think as color becomes more popular, we will see more of that."

Separate departments don’t always indicate separate crews, however. Fracker keeps his workers limber enough to stretch over to various jobs, not pigeon-holing employees into specific categories, like "flower planter," he said. "All of my crews are versatile and can go from one aspect of the job to another. Depending on the size of a job we might have to combine the crew."

Burns keeps color crews organized by assigning a team leader who is responsible for certain accounts year round, tending to their maintenance, installation and design needs, as well as regularly meeting with the clients. Two technicians comprise the leader’s base crew, with extra employees joining during peak planting times in April.

"We like the continuity that a regular crew develops with the client," Burns noted. "The customer knows who their contact is and if they need anything, they can call."

Consistent routes are also a priority at The Morrell Seasonal Color Group, where operation managers handle different regions, Carter noted. The same crews work with the same managers on the same properties. "That way they take ownership for their work and can see the job through from beginning to end," he added.

Caring for color from "beginning to end" doesn’t necessarily mean hanging up the gardeners’ gloves after the first fall frost. In fact, most color department managers note that seasonal color requires year-round attention.

This translates into establishing annual service contracts and keeping full-time employees. "In the spring, we are preparing perennial beds, remulching and fertilizing, and then in April and May we are installing our summer annuals," Carter listed. "The summer is spent maintaining those beds, weeding, pruning, deadheading and making replacements. In the fall, we go through the same schedule of planting the fall flowers and then all of the bulbs. The latter part of November, we install holiday decorations."Though flowers aren’t blooming in chilly months, labor needs are still budding. Burns’ crewmembers visit properties every two weeks during the summer, pulling weeds, touching up mulch and edging beds on one visit, and performing minor "check-up" duties on the next. In the fall, full-time employees plant perennial bulbs for the spring.

"Your people are better trained when they work year-round," Burns added. "You can market an image and get people to associate your name with color specialty."

VIBRANT VALUE. Communication with clients is crucial to maintaining a healthy front yard "first impression." Open conversation with the client begins with open minds. "Once clients decides that they want some kind of a garden, once they have it in their minds, it is already sold," Williams said. "The tricky part is turning it into something that the client will be happy with."

This is why Fracker accompanies his color sales pitch with pictures. "One thing you don’t want to do is take an order of red geraniums and take it to the site and find out the owner wanted white," he said. "They could be very upset, because they’re stuck with those red flowers. Even with our previous clients, we’ll call them each year to find out if they want to change programs."

Fracker also walks the property, discussing plant possibilities with clients and gathering their feedback. Here, he can gauge their budget and estimate a price.

Pricing color programs is a science for Burns, who carefully tracks his costs so that estimates are not guesstimates. From his records, he customizes color program prices, accounting for the number, size and accessibility of beds, and other variables, such as the proximity of the property to the company’s office.

Since no two properties carry the same color program, personalized pricing is important.

"If a property has several big beds, it’s going to be a little cheaper per square foot than one with two small beds," he figured. "Pricing varies a lot. If we have big beds, it’s a volume issue - we’ll be planting more flowers in a more concentrated area, so it will be cheaper to put in, and we will pass that on to the customer."

A three-tiered installation selection provides the pricing framework for The Morrell Seasonal Color Group. Properties are priced by square footage and clients can choose from either a low-end program, which includes basic plant materials such as begonias or Salvia, or a middle-of-the-road option, which mixes in a few exotic plants, such as Bengal Tiger Canna lilies or black elephant ears. High-end installations feature various unusual plants - a culmination of new market selections, Carter described. Prices are then figured based on plants and property size, he said, noting that most clients choose the middle-range mix.

Burns offers a six-month program that includes two plantings, or three plantings in the deluxe program. The customer pays a lump sum of $5,000, which includes maintenance on the property until the next plant is installed, he explained.

Just as the medley of color opportunities for landscapes provides plenty of options for consumers, contractors can take advantage of year-round color and sell programs that last for months, Fracker noted.

"Top selling time for annuals is from the first part of May, then sales drop off by the end of June," he estimated. "The pansies are more of a cool-weather plant, so we’ll start selling those in March, and those will last until the weather starts getting warmer in April. Then, we’ll replant in September and they’ll survive the frost. We try to do all the selling at the beginning of the year."

These color program sales bring in considerable profits, Fracker added. Though he said the company can’t charge as much per flat for annuals as other plants, the mark-up on flowering shrubs and perennials brings dollars to the color division.

Much like other add-on services, color programs can be a money-making extra, profit stemming from accurate prices and renewed contracts from satisfied customers, Burns said.

Residential clients are drawn to the aesthetic qualities color programs bring to landscapes, and commercial customers appreciate the competitive edge and heightened property values associated with flowering displays. Most of all, color offers a creative outlet that adds personality to properties.

"Color programs are really about understanding what your client is looking for, how they are going to use their outdoor space, and then rising to the challenge of meeting that need," Williams reasoned.