Area landscapers, gardeners talk about a booming and competitive business.
By: George Frey
Did you ever wonder what all those landscape crews are doing almost everywhere you go? And how it is possible that they all have work?
Area experts say the answer lies in a number of factors. There are a lot more landscaping jobs around now because of all the new development that has taken place in the region. Also, many homeowners have little time to concern themselves with things like being out on Saturday and Sunday cutting the grass. And, more and more, people want to have aesthetically pleasing work done, like having walkways, patios, gardens or ponds built around their homes.
PBJ talked to some local landscapers and gardeners hard at work as the summer draws to a close, and learned that they are busier than ever in a competitive field and they expect to get even busier in the future, if they decide to take on more work.
"If people knew half of what we could do for them around their places, our phone would ring off the hook, and we could keep more than 20 people busy," said Keith Gardner, who works at the Harvest Moon Garden Center in Lawrence. The center is a nursery which also does architectural garden work, like building gardens, planters, ponds and brick paving for walkways or patios.
The Harvest Moon does not cut grass yet but the majority of their work is repeat business.
Mr. Gardner and Russ Schmeiss, who has owned the Harvest Moon for the past three years, cite the ever-increasing demands on people’s time, coupled with the explosion in real estate development, for the huge influx of landscaping crews in the last several years. Despite the demand for the work, the two say that there is steady competition and that they have a hard time finding the right people to work with them.
Mr. Gardner said his background in farming, groundskeeping and mechanical engineering has equipped him to take on most of the building work that is done on projects. Mr. Schmeiss does more of the actual gardening and horticulture, with both Mr. Schmeiss and Mr. Gardner sharing in the design of the jobs.
Mr. Schmeiss said he has worked in the nursery business since he was in his teens and that he learned "the street method" of nursery work which he described as learning by doing. "I’ve seen a lot of mistakes made by taught landscape architects," Mr. Schmeiss said. "I just have a lot of experience growing plants and getting them in the ground," he said.
"The business continues to grow for us. Even in our worst year, we had 15 percent growth at the garden center," Mr. Schmeiss said. "The center is a great base for business, and the landscaping numbers have jumped quite a bit for us too," he said.
The landscaping and gardening business overall and the competition that comes along with it has changed greatly over the years. Just ask Lou Intartaglia.
Mr. Intartaglia and his family have been gardening and landscaping in the Princeton area for generations, he himself for more than 25 years. He said his family is one of the older gardening families around town, and that it was not uncommon to have the same customers for 20 years or more.
"It’s like any American story there is," Mr. Intartaglia explained. "Fifty years ago, a lot of Italians did the work, and now there’s a lot of Hispanics who do the job. They’re the only people who really want to do the work anymore."
Years ago, Mr. Intartaglia said, gardeners had a few lawns that they would cut and that was that. A gardener may have spent the whole day doing trimming and weeding around one house, he said.
In the past, a lot of the work may have been done on weekends, Mr. Intartaglia explained, because many gardeners and landscapers worked at different jobs during the week Mr. Intartaglia said. Today, however, the competition has become stiffer because crews are doing the work as their sole income, he said.
Also, he pointed out, in this economy, people will get someone new if a crew will do the same job for a little less money. "Today, you have to have a lot of guys on the crew to be competitive," he said. "They are doing as many lawns a day as they can."
Mr. Intartaglia continued, "It’s a tough business. There is a lot of stuff that you have to take into consideration when you go into business. This year we had a good year, but sometimes there are a lot of headaches you have to take into consideration which are out of your control. Like this year those army worms came up from the south and destroyed a lot of peoples lawns. I didn’t have any problems, but I know there were people who lost their lawns. Nobody knew what to do because they had never seen them before this far north."
Mr. Intartaglia said the business has also changed in that there are now tougher constraints from the state in the way of taxes, insurance and general licensing.
Caroline Taraschi who described herself as "probably one of the only women around Princeton doing this" agrees with Mr. Intartaglia about the licensing, which she says adds to the competitiveness of the business. Ms. Taraschi owns Gardenscapes Lawn and Landscape Maintenance Services in Princeton, which runs two landscaping crews and a crew which cuts grass.
Ms. Taraschi’s three-man grass-cutting crew will cut 20 to 30 lawns a day if they don’t have to travel far between jobs, she said.
Ms. Taraschi said it is expensive paying for things like workman’s compensation and liability insurance which, she suspects (but can’t prove), are not paid by all companies.
"The costs add up," she said. People in Princeton Borough and Princeton Township the only areas where she works right now will look to save even $5, she said, which can easily be underbid by a company which doesn’t have the same expenses as she.
The people who comprise the main labor force in the business in this area are Hispanic immigrants. They make the business more competitive, Ms. Taraschi explained, but they are also the people who enable her to run her business.
"My guys are willing to work as hard as I do," she said. "They show up on time and they don’t complain when it’s hot out. I wouldn’t be able to find any Americans who would be willing to do the work."
Ms. Taraschi’s immigrant labor, she says, follows in the footsteps of her own family, which immigrated to the United States from Italy and started gardening and landscaping. She said many Italians in the Princeton area got their start working on estates around town, as her own grandfather did, which eventually led to the family business.
Gardenscapes, which she has owned for 12 years, can be both tiring and rewarding. "I work all the time. I don’t sleep at night sometimes, but that’s the price you pay running your own business," she said.