Best Practices

Fueling the tradition

Stewcare has run an all-diesel fleet for 20 years and stands by this alternative for its efficiency edge.

Stewcare was an early adopter of diesel engine technology. When a mower manufacturer approached the company in the mid-1980s with this fuel alternative, founder Mike Stewart agreed to give it a try. 

“We recognized the power and efficiency and longevity of the (lawn) tractor itself was going to be amplified by going to diesel,” says Stewart’s son, also Mike Stewart and now president of the family business in Delaware, Ohio.

Efficiency is a big deal when crews mow hundreds of acres each week. Stewcare’s primarily commercial clientele includes 35 athletic fields in Central Ohio, three cemeteries, two of the area’s largest school districts and a college campus. Plus, the company’s 25-percent residential customer base is mostly estate properties 1-5 acres in size. 

“Because we are running all diesel engines and all 72-inch cutting decks, the acreage we can mow in one day much less an entire workweek is almost mind-blowing,” Stewart says, unable to pinpoint an exact number. All he knows is that each mower holds 8 gallons of fuel and tanks are replenished every other day. And that’s really stretching fuel dollars for the volume of cuts Stewcare performs. 

Sure, diesel fuel is more expensive. “But we are not using as much,” Stewart says, adding that the fuel also seems to put less stress on engines. For instance, the company recently said goodbye to a member of its fleet: a 2004 mower with more than 4,300 hours on it. That’s eight rigorous commercial mowing seasons. It sold for $3,800. “That is unheard of in the world of used lawn mowers,” Stewart says.     

Stewcare is dedicated to running on diesel for many reasons: engine life, fuel efficiency, crew productivity and the ability to better compete in a tough maintenance market. Actually, longevity, in general, is a sort of theme at the 35-year old company, which Stewart’s father propagated from a janitorial services firm he started in the 1970s. Large building clients asked him to manage snow and ice, then landscape maintenance, and the business evolved, specialized and flourished from there. 

Now, Stewart “runs the show,” according to Mike Stewart Sr., who is involved in daily operations but working a succession plan toward retirement. “I wanted my dad to know that his company would be here, and I’m looking to do what he has done and carry that on,” says son Stewart. And that includes the decision to stick with diesel.

Read how Stewcare breaks down the numbers of using diesel vs. fuel and sign up for the A Cut Above e-newsletter at www.lawnandlandscape.com/newsletters.

Kristen Hampshire
 

Selling smart irrigation

Getting clients onboard with more efficient – and sometimes more expensive – technology means showing them the ROI.

Judith Benson, president of Clear Water PSI, says there are a couple approaches to getting more residential customers to buy into smarter irrigation practices. It can certainly be tricky considering the technology and services can be more expensive. But it’s something that her Winter Springs, Fla.-based company has learned to do.

The first thing an irrigation contractor should do on a property that may be a good fit for smart technology is a complete assessment. “You need to qualify to your client what their water usage is and as a result, what the savings could be,” Benson says. “The truth is it’s not always going to generate savings. If you have a very conservative property, the smart technology could actually increase their water use and would not result in any savings. But for those properties noted as an upper-end consumer, you should be able to easily identify return on investment for their water use. Before you do anything else, you need to show the client that information.”

Getting the ideal contract in order is also critical. Benson says that performance-based contracting is something to consider on these properties, but admits it can be a matter of trial and error.

And that can be risky. But she says that once you get the confidence, a performance-based contract works very well. “You just have to do your homework to sell it,” she adds. “That means showing the ROI. Then you may be able to hand them a full package.”

But even after that happens, Benson says you can’t just install the technology and walk away from it. In fact, she says that’s one of the biggest mistakes that irrigation contractors can make. They assume the new technology is self-sufficient.

“In Florida, we can have some severe weather changes and the condition of a landscape can be altered within a week or two,” she says. “You have to expect that you’re going to need to do follow-ups. And you have to build into your contract enough profit to cover the expenses involved with follow-ups. That’s an area where contractors can lose money because they thought the technology would handle itself.”

Contractors should also realize that learning about some of this new technology can take time. Benson says diving in can be a big mistake.

“You’ve got to be familiar with the technology before you start risking a $25,000 landscape,” she says. “Start out small and work your way up – just make sure you know what you’re doing. You also need to realize that there’s a lot out there. You don’t need to go with the name brand just because you’ve heard of it. Consider looking past that and exploring the options. There’s some really interesting technology out there today.”

To read about more trends Benson is seeing in the Florida market and to sign up for the Water Works e-newsletter, www.lawnandlandscape.com/newsletters.

Lindsey Getz
 

 

Labor of love

Working by horse and hand, Barnwell Landscape and Garden Services designs and builds stunning resort displays using innovative techniques.

Jack Barnwell often tells his crew to “think like an Egyptian” while unloading and planting by hand everything from flats of annuals to 20-foot maple trees with 4-foot-wide burlap balls. The old-fashioned way is protocol on Mackinac Island, Mich., a throwback resort community that banned the “horseless carriage” (we know them as automobiles) in the early 1900s when the popping, backfiring engine noise scared horses.

The ban stuck. And today, landscapers like Jack Barnwell, president, Barnwell Landscape and Garden Services, have a slim two-week window of time at the beginning or end of the vacation season to use machinery for digging foundations and such. The rest of the backbreaking labor must be done by horse and hand. 

Barnwell’s designs include the gardens at the Hotel Iroquois.

This requirement has actually inspired Barnwell to work smarter and invent ways of hauling materials (by bike cart), placing step-sized boulders (by pulley) and placing plant material by hand. “Look at some of the most monumental, beautiful structures in the world and all over Europe,” Barnwell says. “There are huge, stone sculptures and arches and incredible bridges that were built before there were excavators, front-end loaders and forklifts. There was knowledge of how to do things without killing yourself,” he jokes. “And unfortunately, that art has been forgotten because there is an easier way (with machinery). I feel really blessed that I have been forced to relearn some of these alternatives to doing the work we do.”

Specifically, the work Barnwell Gardens does is create and maintain the Signature Garden – a concept Barnwell developed in conjunction with grower Proven Winners – at the Hotel Iroquois, an intimate Victorian-style boutique hotel known for its quaint, cottage gardens. 

“The exposure of having larger hotel/resort properties as clients has allowed us to really show off our unique gardening concepts,” says Barnwell. Not surprisingly, he looks to historic building or engineering feats for inspiration. “And then I try to translate that to my small world of plants and place,” he says. “It makes for some pretty wild days.”

A wild day as defined by Barnwell goes something like this: figuring out how to install 35 stone steps, using gigantic boulders and rock walls, on a sloped property. Each step is 6-8 inches thick and 3-4 feet deep. The landscape slopes down toward the water’s edge of Lake Michigan.

Read how Barnwell pulled off the wild project and sign up for the Business Builder e-newsletter at www.lawnandlandscape.com/newsletters.

Kristen Hampshire
 

Planting Mackinac at home The most surprising aspect of the gardens at Hotel Iroquois, according to Barnwell: “The fact that there are so many flowers and not a single weed.” That’s because flowers are packed tightly into beds for maximum impact. “This not only creates a carpet of color, texture, shapes and scent, but it also does not allow for any weeds to compete,” he says. Barnwell’s high-impact design at the hotel is accomplished by planting densely, experimenting with different varieties and by implementing a cottage garden style that evolves as Barnwell digs into the project. “I do come up with a color scheme and overall theme for the gardens by the previous January so I can get my (plant) order in, but a detailed design would be very hard for me to do for that particular property because of the gardening style,” he says. Here are some design techniques Barnwell incorporates into the Hotel Iroquois gardens.    Containers. Pots of color bring fragrance and style onto porches and seating areas.   Pocket gardens. Private spaces for guests to enjoy and linger offer an intimate feel.   Window boxes. Color climbs the walls with the use of window planters.   Seating spots. Creating areas for guests to take in the surroundings promotes appreciation of the property.

 

The great debate

Here’s why one LCO uses liquid over granular applications. 

There is an age-old debate among landscape companies as to whether liquid or granular fertilizers offer better results, efficiency and cost-effectiveness when it comes to turf management. Yet for industry veteran Andrew Adams, president of Capital Turf Management in Huntingdon Valley, Pa., that contest was settled long ago. 

“Liquid fertilizers are less expensive, more accurate and there’s a lot less cleanup,” says Adams, whose $1.5 million company has offices in Pennsylvania and Maryland and provides commercial turf management. “As long as you get solid coverage with liquid fertilizers, you’re going to get good results.”

Since 2003, when Adams founded Capital Turf to focus on commercial turf management, he has subcontracted with large landscapers to maintain athletic fields, swim clubs, churches, high schools, colleges and universities, just to name a few. Over the years, he’s developed a business model that allows him to apply fertilizer to large properties both economically and profitably.

“I’m preloaded for five acres, whereas with granular, you can put four to five bags in and only do one acre,” Adams says. “My guy is just spraying, spraying, spraying.”

Of course, Adams hasn’t sworn off granular fertilizers entirely – they’re often good for small-scale residential use and late fall applications when weed control isn’t an issue, he says. Yet he maintains that more and more turf management companies are following his lead and switching to liquid-only applications. Here’s why.

Blanket coverage. Liquid fertilizers are preferable, Adams says, because they allow turf management companies to provide fertilizer and weed control in a single, blanket application.

“You can put crabgrass pre-emergent herbicide, weed control and fertilizer into one application, and then blanket spray over everything,” he says.

Getting it right the first time is important when you are servicing hundreds of commercial properties every year.

“It’s very hard, in my opinion, to do a 90-acre site and do a spot treatment for weed control,” he says. “In the commercial realm of things, you can often only do two applications a year, so we have to almost be perfect.”

Efficient application. Granular fertilizers can be effective when covering a small, focused area, yet bigger guns are needed to do an application to a large commercial property.

“If you’re doing granular, there are good machines out there, but they go 6-7 miles per hour and have a boom that allows you to spot-treat,” Adams says. “That makes it harder to blanket spray, and sometimes you have to go over sites twice.”

By way of contrast, Capital Turf’s crew members employ a 300-gallon boom sprayer with handguns, allowing them to spray liquid fertilizer in broad, 15-foot swaths. “We can cover everything,” Adams says.

Adams has six more reasons why he prefers to use liquid over granular applications. To read them and sign up for the Growing Green e-newsletter, visit www.lawnandlandscape.com/newsletters.

Lee Chilcote
 

Profiting from snow – without a plow The extreme winter weather that’s been hitting the Northeastern U.S. in recent years has often made it tough for plows to clear the roads effectively. Yet that has led to a profitable side business for Capital Turf Management. “If there’s a storm, cities and towns will call us in to pre-treat the roadways,” Adams says. “We have a truck with a modified boom arm, and we use that to apply a combination of salt and magnesium calcium. We will put lines in the roadway, and when temperatures get to a certain level, that helps to melt the snow.” Perhaps the best part is that Capital gets paid for the service whether it snows or not, unlike plowing businesses that are sometimes dependent upon the snowfall an area receives. “It’s a crapshoot for people,” Adams says. “We’ll get a call and do it, and if it turns into rain, then we still get paid.”  Adams believes that add-on services such as this one, if they are properly thought out and managed, can be very profitable for landscape companies. “As much competition as there is, it’s not a bad idea to diversify a little bit,” he says. “As long as you stay focused on your main thing and it doesn’t take away from what you know best.”