<b>Trees, Ornamental & Bedding Plant:</b> Contractor's Choice

CEO and president, Mission Landscape Companies, Irvide, Calif.

Business split: 70 percent maintenance; 30 percent landscape architecture, design/build and installation

Employees: 520

Revenue: $26 million

Typical annual spend on plant materials: more than $1 million

Which three plants do you most
commonly recommend for installations?
We’re seeing a move toward agave-type plants, and suggesting clients move into pots. People are enjoying the look. It’s a change. You don’t have to be there every day or three days a week to keep watering them. It’s being accepted well and we’re bringing it to them. A lot of it is the backdrop. In Orange County, there’s a lot of green on green, which helps greatly contrast the architecture. It doesn’t take away the architecture from the structure.

We also use large ficus hedges kept formally or ligustrum hedges kept full. It warms the landscape and contrasts with lower plants in front. Lasopus ballerinas – just a vibrant flower, but thin. Clients tend to want it to fill in, but it doesn’t. Bogenvilla with an agave, or with something. We see more plants created that just contrast the foundation. We’re seeing more variegated, pictosporum, variegata.

Some of the plant palettes in Orange County, the sites that have a very simple four to five plant selection, those are the sites that appear the best to people.

Where do you buy your plants?
Norman’s Nursery – they’re steady on quality and service. Norman’s is a large, name-brand nursery, and there are so many small nurseries from San Diego to Santa Barbara. We buy trees from ValleyCrest. Tree of Life has your native plants here in San Juan Capastrano, and there’s California Living Nursery. If they don’t have what you need, they’ll find it for you.

Why do you buy them there? 
Norman’s is solid with their availability. Being a resource that you can get all the plants you need from one nursery certainly simplifies the whole project. The quantities they can provide with one phone call, the steadiness of their quality. Sometimes you can find a little better price, but you get out there and you’re like ‘What’s this?’ Clients don’t want to hear ‘It’ll grow; it’ll fill in.’ To some clients, plants are like a widget. That’s a challenge, because plant material is a living organism. It’s affected by its environment. –Chuck Bowen