FEATURES
In Your Own Words
Are you Qualified?
Atlanta
“How many of you guys are actual experienced and trained landscapers and designers, and how many are full of it? I see many companies in my area that have on their signs ‘landscape design and installation.’ I will bet that many are not even near qualified to do the work. I’m not talking about the big guys; I’m talking about Joe Shmow, Jose and Billy Bob.
“Maybe they hire others to do the design work, and they just do the installs. I don’t know. My guess is many are not qualified and are trying to do it themselves.
“So, my question is this, are you one of those, or are you really qualified to do the work?”
New Castle, Pa.
“What meets qualification, fancy degrees or experience?”
Iowa
“I have a designer do all the work. I get the job, bid the job, may even work on the job, shoot ideas to client. Degree—nothing but a four-year double major in biz administration and financing. First Landscape job topping $1,000 was back when I was 16 (driving age). From there, jobs range from $1,000 to $50,000, so you decide if I am Joe Blow or qualified to meet your requirements.”
Florida
“I am definitely not qualified. Good thing I don’t do landscape designs, I usually just wing it when I am at the job site. But at least I lowball so the customers don’t give a crap.”
Flint, Mich.
“Yeah, like he said! Me too!”
New Jersey
“Whether you guys mean in or not (I hope you are kidding), I have found that there are a lot of very wealthy people who will overlook poor installs because of a low price. There was a scrub doing paver work on one of the wealthier streets where we work, who managed to work his way right down the street, butchering job after job. I would cringe every time I drove down the street because it was like a how-to course in what not to do, yet he managed to keep working. Three months later, his work is showing bad settling, undulations, and none of his wall work was set correctly to begin with.
“All in all, this reflects badly on the industry. I know for a fact that these people are going to be pissed of at me, or whoever gives them a quote on removing and resetting everything, and the installer is probably already out of business.”
Cape Cod
“The thing is that we all look at the industry as having a minimum threshold of legitimacy, which just so happens to be defined by our own qualifications. Those of us who have started with shovels in our hands and have no degrees view those with degrees as having no practical experience. Those with the degrees view those without them as being scrubs.
“The fact of the matter is that if someone is buying your services, you are legitimate. Whoever you are losing jobs to are legitimate competition. Those who you cannot take work from are apparently ahead of you, or you would get the jobs.
“It is a diverse industry, and there are lots of niches within it that require less knowledge and experience and lots that require more. We don’t decide that, the consumers do. It is what it is.”
Central Florida
“Embroider the above into your skulls! That is so right on!
“In case you’re wondering about my qualifications, I was born and raised on a general stock nursery and have 27 full-time years of repetitious landscape design, installation and maintenance behind me, and I will never ever know it all! I am a new member this year on LS, there is lots of fact and fiction here. What I have found is that we are all here not just to make a buck, but to learn and grow with a chosen profession that we all enjoy. There are no useless threads or information here! Everything usually works itself out. The fact that you just read this post means that you care to.”
New Castle, Pa.
“Right on the money.”
New Jersey
“I started in the industry working for a large design/build firm for several years while I was going to college. Turned out that I liked landscaping a lot more than accounting. A buddy of mine from high school went to Rutgers and graduated with a landscape/horticulture degree and is now a landscape architect. He had always been self-employed, never working in the field for anyone else.”
Atlanta
“I don’t do landscape installations, just maintenance for the time being until I can gain the necessary knowledge and skills. My signs and business cards do not have landscaping anywhere on them, and I don’t pretend or imply that I’m a landscaper.
“I have had people ask me to do landscape work, and I tell them that I only do maintenance right now. I’m not implying that you have to have a degree to be a landscaper. There are plenty of self-taught people out there and people who have worked for or under someone qualified to do the work. I’m talking about the people who put ‘landscape design and installation’ on their truck and trailer and on their business cards that really don’t have the experience or the training or the background, but yet they call themselves landscapers.
“Buy a truck and trailer and a couple mowers and shovels and, hey, you’re a landscaper. How many are guilty of calling themselves landscapers just because they own some of the tools to do the job?”
Hey I think I’ll buy a couple of pots and pans and some knifes and call myself a chef.
Allegan, Mich.
“I’m full of it. However, I wouldn’t try to be something I’m not. Designing landscapes, etc. is nothing I’d want to tackle with no experience.”
Cape Cod
“Some of you guys have made experience by doing things you had not done before, but were not way over your head. Each time you gained more to apply to the next, more involved job. A lot of this stuff is pretty basic. If you have been trimming shrubs and maintaining gardens for 10 years I would think you know what they are, how fast they grow, which do well and under what conditions they do best.
“You can look up hardiness zones in books all day long, but some plants have very unique problems in certain regions and don’t in others. You won’t get that in a book.
“On the other hand, the more you can learn from books, teachers and others that you can combine with practical experience, the better off you’ll be. That works whether you have the experience up front or the education up front.”
Northern Virginia
“As it applies to who exactly is posting here, I think it’s a valid question. It’s an online forum. I could post on here saying I’m a former Playboy bunny who discovered she was a talented mason, and how would anyone verify that?
“As far as the guys you see driving around, that’s hard to quantify because there really are no universally recognized standards for what to call yourself. Most states have laws governing whether or not you can use the term ‘landscape architect,’ but I don’t know of any that have practice acts regarding landscape designers. I would think, though, that the unqualified ones would be easy pickings, as long as you know what you’re doing.
“Anyhow, to answer your question: I do this all day, every day, and have been in the industry for 15 years.”
Weatherford, Texas
“I just put landscape in my name. I don’t know anything about plants, or dirt or anything. I barely know how to put ‘em in the ground! I just wing it and charge people $20,000 to do it. Ha!
“I think the people who put landscape in their name, hope to eventually learn, but if they are charging for good landscapes and have no idea what they’re doing, then that’s bad. I hope there are people in this industry who are honest about what they know and what they can do. Although there was one company in town a while back that all of the sudden put landscape in their name. I saw them working on a project in a pretty nice neighborhood so I kept a watch. One week in it looked like crap, a couple days later their sign was gone and one of the bigger companies in town was there. Bottom line: if you don’t know what you’re doing, learn on your own house, not someone paying thousands of dollars!”
Illinois
“I’d say 80 to 90 percent of the small guys in my area (and they are all almost small guys) have no clue as to what they are doing or knew 20 years ago and haven’t learned a thing since. Case in point, one of the older companies that has a lot of municipal contracts loves putting alpine currents (Ribes alpinum) everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still in school for this, and even when I’m done I won’t know but 10 percent of the business, but I’m pretty sure I’ll have a better handle than a lot of guys.
“(Not soon enough) Graduate in landscape design.
“Winner of some ILCA college challenge awards.”
Kentucky
“This is very interesting. It made me ask myself some things. The post title, I would say landscaper, but by some of the definitions I would say bulls**tter. Very tricky. I have a diploma in landscape design, but people here would still say bulls**tter. For the most part, I have not tackled anything over my head...ummm, well, way over my head. My biggest budget has been $3,200. Don’t laugh, remember I’m a bulls**tter. But that job is my best looking and feeling. My first sod install, first house sitting on dirt with a clean slate. First subbing job, I had to get it rough and finish graded. I tell you what though, I am not going to stay a bulls**tter forever.”
Clifton Park, N.Y.
“ICPI Certified Professional Hardscaper here, and we learn all the time.”
North Carolina
“I’m totally bs.”
Zephyrhills, Fla.
“I don’t have landscape anywhere in my business info, but on the few jobs that I have picked up this winter, I have brought in the right people when I got to a point that I was over my head.
“I don’t touch irrigation! Those guys have a trade for a reason, and because they are there, I let them do their job. Yes, it is a little less cash in my pocket now, but the customer won’t be calling me back for dead grass or plants because I totally muffed the sprinkler system.
“I have a big job coming up on Wednesday of this week, and since I have never removed an entire side of a yard and replaced with a flowerbed and put all the plants and what have yous. I am bringing in a close friend, and we are splitting the job. I may actually give him a little more of the money because I am learning from him even though it is my customer and my job.
“Yes, I am a BS artist, but as I learn I retain and won’t make mistakes that will hurt my business or the industry. If necessary, I will simply defer to a bigger and better company before I will hurt myself!”
Richmond, Va.
“While I do agree that most LCOs are likely not as fully qualified as they would like to be, and I could be guilty of this, but true landscaping involves working with terrain. I’m talking you probably have, at the very least, a tractor with a loader and a backhoe, though a bulldozer would qualify, moving portions of the earth, see where I’m coming from?
“But a French drain is landscaping, so are those landscaping timbers, technically installs such as flowerbeds and mulch is landscaping, laying down white stone in a walkway is landscaping, not sure about an irrigation system, but it probably fits. Once we get down to lawn mowing and hedge trimming, I think we’re outside the landscaping category.
“By the way, what we do falls under agricultural, city farming some of us say.
“And farming, in many ways involves landscaping, plowing and tilling sure is, not sure about core aeration, but seeding might.
“See, landscaping is a very broad term, it encompasses thousands of subcategories, not just within the garden and ag sectors, but into the industrial sector as well. It is so broad, in fact, I don’t use it for myself because of the very reasons you mention, but I don’t find but so much fault in other LCOs using it, if that’s how they wish to describe what they do, so be it, that’s everybody’s choice.”
Flint, Mich.
“I think a lot of people need to worry about their own qualifications and not worry about anybody else’s...
“Lets face it, you don’t need a license to do most of it in most states. No license needed = no qualifications needed. I did like [a previous] point. You could have four degrees and still not know how to move dirt or build a retaining wall. Let the buyer beware. That’s the only rule I’ve heard of in this game.”
Indiana
“Some say I’m the king of bulls**t.”
Alabama
“I don’t advertise landscaping, but I am getting more involved in it. I started out just doing loader work, but the more you can do the better. I’m going to take some classes this year and try to challenge myself with some bigger landscaping projects. For now, though, I leave the designing to those trained in design, and I do the implementing.”
Pittsburgh, Pa.
“When some of you gentlemen said you hired someone to do the landscape design end of the business when one of your customers ask you to do it, how do you go about doing that? What are the costs usually? And, after the designer completes the work for you, is it clear enough that you actually know what you are doing?”
Oklahoma
“Here is something to chew on. I never even worked in a flowerbed, never even have seen a piece of sod. Stopped at a nice house to ask about mowing their yard in April and they asked me to clean out flowerbeds and re-mulch. They paid me $1,000. She said since we did such a good job could we install beds in the backyard. Boom, she paid us over $3,000, and she went to the nursery and picked out and bought the plants and let us use her tractor. We then asked about two dead trees in the yard, and she paid us $1,000 to cut them down and haul them off. Needless to say, we became ‘landscapers’ from that point on.
“We did three jobs after that around $1,5000, [and] then got the Holy Grail of jobs. A brand-new, million-dollar home with just dirt around it. I bought fancy landscaping software and designed their yard on my laptop. After presenting them with it, they said ‘When can you start?’ It was a $120,000 job! I was scared to death when they said that.
“I rented a skid steer (with air), got about 10 friends and family, hired a stonemason to do the 1,800 square feet of sidewalks and the retaining wall, and hired a septic guy to put in the sprinkler system. Built berms in the yard, laid out the beds, [and] then I paid the nursery a little extra to come out and physically make my plant order. I spent nearly $27,000 just on the plants. We laid over 20,000 square feet of sod, and the job looks awesome! We even got full-size trees in the yard. I am just saying that just because you don’t have a degree, or have been to landscape design school, it doesn’t mean you can’t ask people’s opinions and find out how to do things from someone who does. Hell, the nursery even delivered the plants and placed them where they thought they should go, and they provided all the chemicals that we needed to make sure the plants grow right and look good. The best part about the job was the 20-year-old Japanese maple we brought in and built the sidewalks around.
“Oh, and something that I want to say, that probably would have helped someone like me. I never realized how much taxes are, I guess because we have never made that much money before, but you need to set aside between 28 to 40 percent for taxes. I never ever imagined paying that much. I am going to have to write a check for almost $50,000 before April. I almost had a heart attack. My tax lady said she was going to try and find a few more things to help, but at this point, we are pretty close.”
Cape Cod
“You might want to talk to another accountant, just to make sure.”
Flint, Mich.
“That’s an even better story than all the solos making $600 per day. Shazaaam!”
Colorado
“Six hundred dollars a day, one guy, that can be done, and is getting done all the time. I once mowed 36 lawns in one day by myself at an average of $30 a pop. Do the math.”
Flint, Mich.
“If that took 12 hours, that would be 20 minutes per lawn. Were they all lined up nicely?”
Colorado
“I showed up at 6 a.m. for the first lawn and got done around 7:45 p.m.
“I wouldn’t say lined up ‘nicely.’ I knew a guy that owned a lawn care company who couldn’t get all their residentials cut, and I helped out for a healthy price. Because they were in such a bad situation. After mowing each lawn (keep in mind with all of my own gear) I wrote down what I would have charged for that lawn, and he paid up for it. Needless to say, I haven’t heard form the guy since. It wasn’t nice at all.”
Flint, Mich.
“But you say this is getting done all the time by solos.”
Stuart’s Draft, Va.
“Six hundred dollars for a solo is not that hard. I have a few commercial accounts that I can knock out in about 8.5 hours that gross $660. If I wanted to kill myself and work a 10-hour day, I am sure I could gross another $125 to $150 easy. I just wish every day was like that.
“I have decided to get back into the landscaping side of the business this year. I made good money when I did landscaping, I just got lazy the last two to three years and didn’t wanna do anything but mow-LOL, hell, I didn’t even wanna do that.”
Colorado
“I said $600 solo a day. I didn’t say over a $1,000 a day solo. I was trying to make the point that if all you have are resi’s, and you have 20 to do in a day, it can be done, easily. 20 x 30 = 600—piece of cake! Of course, I’ll make more off the commercials with a four-man crew, but I love my resi’s all by myself, making all the bread, running the show with the windows down, smokin’ a menthol wide! (gross huh?)”
Westside Oregon
“I can basically just condense my background and let someone decide if it’s thorough:
Six golf courses
Two university campuses
Two landscape companies
Horticulturist
Greenskeeper
Golf course superintendent
Crew leader
Foreman
Owner
Certified arborist and certified landscape technician
Two years of college with a 3.60 GPA—letter of reference from college department head
In hort since 1980/in business since 1988
About 3,500 complete contracts of 1 hour to weeks long
Appointed by Oregon’s governor to two terms on landscape board
Can prune with the best of arborists
Can design with the best of designers
Can install very nicely, but not sure if up there with the best.
“That’s it in a nutshell.”
Washington
“Also, the only person in the Pacific Northwest who knows how to properly plant Leyland Cyprus.”
Richmond, Va.
“Yes, but you’re not the only one who knows these trees are man-made hybrids, named after their inventor, these trees are incapable of procreating on their own and must thus first be farmed. Actually, I think the process is called preening.
“So, be it of no surprise to a customer when I quote them a high price to transplant such a tree, they can call you, or they can call whoever they want, because if anyone does it for less it means they know less to nothing about the species.
“That having been said, beyond some initial frustration, I really don’t see a BS artist getting too far, too many things have been mentioned here that quite frankly I myself could give a rat about. For instance, I don’t need a Ph.D. in horticulture to know there exists no such thing as a permanent weed solution, it gets to a point, who cares.”
Pewaukee
“Wow! And I’m just starting out in landscape horticulture. That’s got to be enough to fill the résumé.
“Not to argue, but throwing out a point. I’m going to school for this with [an] emphasis in design/construction. Medically speaking, from my recent physical the doctor’s orders came down that I’m going to have to have a career change—looking at another knee replacement this time in the right leg. So, my long days of hard work are very limited. I’m hoping I can find and fit into one of the many different lines of landscaping, instead of being a general laborer. It seems with a lot of the companies around here is if you design it you build it, I think I’ll be able to do that, but I’m going to have to slow down and take frequent breaks, thus losing a lot of productivity. So, I’ve got to rely more on knowledge instead of productivity, which through my school I’ve learned a lot more than I have in my past three seasons.
“Enrolled in MATC’s Landscape Horticulturist Program.
“Foreman/Driver/Grunt/Crew Leader for Bill’s Lawn and Landscape.
“Then 0311 USMC Reserve Golf Co. 2/24 Infantry
“Now 21J Army Reserve 996th Charlie Co. (Combat)(Heavy) Engineers.”
Westside Oregon
“Interesting you mention that résumé thing.
“When I was one-third of the way to where I’m at now, like 20 years ago, I’d kill myself to make my seven years worth of semi-qualifications stretch to fill up two or three résumé pages. Now, I just use one page for all 28 years.
“Sure is a heck of a lot easier to make just one sheet too.”
Exton, Pa.
“I agree with a lot of what is being said on this post, especially the fact if these guys are bothering you because you feel threatened by them? These low-ballers do shoddy work at best, still work hard (just not working smart), and apparently have their clients fooled. There are always going to be the trucks with a magnet on the side and two schlubs attempting to make a living. Some people just don’t care about quality, only price. These penny-pinchers are hard to satisfy because their budget is never realistic for a professional contractor.
“We are in a mixed market where I work, and I always tell customers when getting bids from a few companies to run down a checklist. By informing your potential customer, you’re already ahead of the other guy. Offer references, make sure they’re comparing apples to apples (plant sizes, good design, warranties, reputation!), and most of all I say, ‘Mrs. Jones, there’s always going to be someone out there that will do the job for less than me, but there’s a reason why our prices are at that level. Our nursery has been in the industry for over 20 years now. All of our workers have at least seven years of experience.’
“Bottom line is, you need to let your market know what sets you apart from the competition. Is it experience or are you a better BS’er? You decide.”
Cape and Islands
“From The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Copyright 2006
“‘Landscaping is both science and art, and requires good observation and design skills. A good landscaper understands the elements of nature and construction, and blends them accordingly.’
“An early Greek philosopher known for his view that ‘all is water,’ spent a considerable time thinking about the nature and scope of landscaping. Some of his students believed that in order for human activity to be considered landscaping, it must be directed toward modifying the physical features of the land itself, including the cultivation and/or manipulation of plants or other flora. Thales rejected this notion, arguing that any aspect of the material world affecting our visual perception of the land was a proper subject for landscaping. Both Plato and Aristotle praised Thales’ analysis as a model for philosophy. In the early 20th century, British philosopher G.E. Moore cited Thales’ reasoning as one of the few historical examples of how philosophical inquiry has led to genuine human understanding and progress.
“Philosophers in the 17th century debated whether visual beauty was a necessary goal of landscaping. With the advent of the positivists by the early 20th century, however, most western philosophers had rejected the notion of an objective esthetic standard for any form of art, including landscaping. Practitioners since the mid-20th century have experimented with jarring visual panoramas that are now generally accepted, at least in western societies, as falling within the scope of landscaping.”
Dallas-Fort Worth area, Texas
“To be honest, I don’t really tout myself as a landscaper. More of a lawn care specialist who knows how to do random landscape installs. I learn a little bit more every year about landscaping, and I try to find a place to do a new install of something I’ve never done before at a friend’s house or a relative’s house to gain some no-harm, no-foul experience. I don’t claim to be a landscape professional, and I rarely do any landscape projects for people who aren’t already lawn care clients of mine.”
Massachusetts
“I’ve had the opportunity to work in the industry with a guy for almost the past 20 years, and we have done every aspect of landscaping design and install, and I am starting some jobs of my own for my lawn accounts on the side. This also never interferes with my main job.
“[The] problem I have is that I know how to do everything with that many years of experience, but have no clue how to price the job. Is it by the day, by the hour, according to the materials used, machine hours, etc. Someone wants to pay hourly for getting the job done plus materials, they will get a great job. But then again, as many have told me, my prices should be higher for what I know and can do. Forty dollars an hour apparently isn’t enough.
“Landscaper or designer? After 20 years of ‘seeing it all’ in landscaping and general contracting, I can say safely, both.
“And don’t get me started on those ‘landscape architects!’”
Orlando, Fla.
“Basically, I feel that we all love to be on our own and work outside for whatever reason. Some of us think we are great at this, some of us think this is just another paycheck. If you actually love this kind of work and are up to the challenge to do new things, then you are a landscaper.
“You may cut grass, do installs, are ICPI certified, irrigation whatever. The fact is, when the day is done, you feel you [have] accomplished something today. You got your hands dirty. You didn’t get into a car and head to an office working 9 to 5 for the same friggin’ paycheck week after week after week...
“This is what we do. We may struggle from time to time. The weather may shoot us down or build us up. We go by nature and gut instinct to be the best at this no matter what it is. That’s all I have to say about that.”
Central New York
“I decided early on after working for my dad (house builder) [that] I would go a different route. I went to a four-year school and get a degree in technology education, which I used to become a shop teacher. My degree consisted of classes on everything from metals technology to home construction, plumbing, electrical and industrial design and drawing. My many computer classes and graphic design classes led me to create my own logos, flyers, Web sites, designs and to create information pages for customers that are beautiful and easy to understand.
“I have now been employed for five years and my salary is a little over $52,000 for 180 days of work. I teach eighth graders the love of the technical world. I also have a master’s in education. The great thing about my degree and education was it allowed me to produce start-up cash to try out this industry. If I ever decided I could not hack it, or got burned [out], I could just go back to playing golf all summer.
“During college I worked for landscapers full-time, farmers (to gain machine experience), and a chemical fertilizer plant (to gain fertilizer experience). In an unknown way, I got a ton of experience in quite a few areas of landscaping, and I really did a ton of hardscaping and loved it. I have always had the equipment and building bug, it’s in my genes. Even if I wanted to quit this industry, I couldn’t.
“Two years ago I started a property service business because all of my ‘friends,’ could not stop asking for me to do a little job here or there, and I decided I should just as well get paid. I am not trying to steal anyone’s work, as I will always stay a solo, I just have the intense love for making things right, like many in the industry.
“I have found my education route has really allowed me to talk with people and educate them on correct policies and practices. My general knowledge has been more of an asset. Sure I [mess] up many times, but I think the difference is the ability to make it right. Really, contracting work comes down to the integrity of who you’re working with doesn’t it?”
“I am working to go to ICPI and join more landscaping groups. I have to be honest, us little guys fill a very important role in the grand scheme of things. I work solo, and many trust my integrity as a fixture in the public community, and many choose to work with me. I would imagine my prices are lower than others in the area, but I have lower overhead, and my goal is to not go all out and become a shine and fade super company.”
Connecticut
“I have a four-year degree in landscape development/agricultural business from SUNY Cobleskill. I am 21 years old, and I’m the landscape manager for a high-end general contractor working on $40 million-plus homes in Greenwich, Conn. I am gaining experience every day, but I think I’m successful seeing I’m working for and installing one of the country’s best landscapes architects.
Beaverton, Oregon
“I have no clue what I am doing, but I did manage to bring in $1.3 million last year for our company.
“Not bad for a bulls**tter, huh?”
Carle Place, N.Y.
“I’m sure not qualified, I just go around getting the bucks.”
“In Your Own Words” is contributed from the lawn and landscape forum at www.lawnsite.com. Visit them, and join in the discussions.
