Last year, Flo Olson tallied up the number of lawn maintenance contractors working in and around the resort community of Kalispell, Montana. By her best reckoning, there were 50 contractors. She added another 30 to her list this year, for a total of at least 80 companies, big and small, all competing for a piece of the mowing/maintenance market.

Mark Chaffin, owner of Earthworks, Inc., in Lillian, Texas, admits to being a rather low-profile individual who runs a low-profile company. He shies away from the spotlight and his company does very little advertising. In fact, until two years ago, the Earthworks’ name wasn’t even on the sides of its trucks. This may not seem all that unusual until you learn that Earthworks, in business since 1979, employs 200 people, has more than 200 commercial clients, owns 52 trucks, and operates 33 Walker Mowers. 

Name an industry other than farming where the cost of doing business is going up while the dollar-value of the product is going down? The answer, of course, is landscape maintenance, and just like good farmers, successful landscape maintenance contractors have to carry a sharp pencil, produce an excellent product, and be as efficient as possible on the job. Enter the Stott brothers.

Driving down the road, 20- year-old Jason Fawcett cradles two cell phones. In between calls he talks about his life as an owner of a very successful lawn maintenance company and full-time fire fighter.

When Juan Berriz’s father Gabriel immigrated to Puerto Rico from Cuba in the early 1960s, the landscaping profession was in its infancy. In fact, Juan says many of the developers on the island attributed his dad’s influence to the growth of the profession, more specifically in helping to meld together the separate disciplines of landscape design and installation. Juan now looks to carry on the tradition by strengthening the natural ties between landscape installation and maintenance.

It would be easy to talk about his energy, his confidence or the beautiful surroundings in which he works. But the real story of Bradley Carvalho of BJ Services in Kohala Coast, Hawaii, is where he came from and what drives him and his family to stay close to their roots.