An industry leader, lost

I met Burt Sperber in person exactly two times. The first was in 2010, when he was the marquee event at PLANET's Executive Forum and Leadership meetings in Las Vegas. He and Bill Hildebolt, then association president, held a Q&A as part of the meeting's agenda. He told the assembled crowd that he preferred the title of "head gardener" to founder, chairman or CEO.

"Anybody who looks down on it doesn't understand it – if you're not proud of the industry, go be a photographer, a banker, a lawyer," he said in his trademark matter-of-fact way.

But my favorite part of the event was the tour he and his staff gave at the ValleyCrest Las Vegas facility. He'd pulled out all the stops – even had a crane on hand with a giant boxed tree to demonstrate how his crews could move anything. Richard, his son and ValleyCrest CEO, was there, too, and they both spent hours talking with anyone who cared to stop and chat.

As we were gearing up for a session on the new Aria hotel – where ValleyCrest had just completed another massive landscaping project – we ran out of seats. So Burt headed out the door and started bringing in dozens of chairs himself.

The second was just this summer. I'd flown out to San Diego for a story and drove up to Los Angeles to see Burt. The ValleyCrest headquarters are beautiful, but nothing you wouldn't expect for a company so grounded in landscape design principles. He and I and Richard talked in a plush sitting room between their offices on the third floor.

We talked about ValleyCrest – recent acquisitions, plans for the company and plans for him. He had no intention of slowing down anytime soon.

Burt and I only sat down together twice, but we talked often. He was always ready with advice and insight when I had questions, and always gave it to you straight. Whenever I spoke with Burt, I knew I was talking with someone who was made for what he did. He loved landscaping, yes, but he also loved people – his thousands of employees, his customers and strangers who stopped by to chat.

Burt wasn't a big presence at industry trade shows or conferences. He preferred to spend his time working. But his humble, modest and hard-working approach was the only way anyone could ever hope to build such an enduring legacy, or set the bar so high.

The industry is darker without Burt Sperber in it, but what he built, and the example he set, will endure. And we're all better for it.

 

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