I mean, I can’t tell you how many HOAs just come in there with. Hedgers and just, it’s uh, it’s pretty saddening, especially when we do an install with Peer Landscaping and we make this nice, beautiful, beautiful design and about a year into it, everything’s blooming and starting to really take off. And then, um, I get a, a text call or email from a customer.
Oh my gosh, all my shrubs, are they gonna make it? Yes, they will make it most likely, unless they really hacked them. But it’s just, it’s so sad to see the devastation of improper maintenance. Welcome to the Landscape Cafe, brought to you with support from Fort Myers Garden Service, maintaining and protecting business and residential landscapes.
Visit Fort Meyers Garden service.com or call 239 990 7494. What is your day-to-day look like? Operations inside Fort Myers Garden Service. What makes you guys different? Um, not looking for necessarily a sales pitch here, but what, what do you, what makes you guys different? Why do you enjoy what you do?
Um, tell me a little bit about Fort Myers Garden Service. Well, we like to joke, but we provide the white glove service. All right. Meaning the, The more detail oriented, the higher level, instead of taking a hedge trimmer to every shrub or hedge. We primarily do selective hand pruning, not only because it end and the end result generally looks better, but because it’s.
Better for the plant health, it’s better for the overall, um, structure of the plant and knowing how, and more importantly, knowing when within the year to Pune is important. That way you’re not pruning a shrub just before it’s about to bloom when the client is absolutely love has the. Only for the blooms, and if they get all cut off, well then there’s, there’s no blooms for that year, so.
We specialize in that. We also do pest and disease scouting on a regular each visit, so that entails getting in there and looking at every part of the plant, looking for scale on the bottom side of the leaves looking. For any grubs or um, any caterpillars or grass offers that might be tearing up the foliage and not just looking at things from afar and saying, oh yeah, everything looks good, because it might look good from afar.
But we get in there and we really look at the plant and address if there is a fungus issue, and if we do find one, we take care of. For sure. I think a lot of our customers, um, at first, you know, a huge part of our job, I think with a Garden Service Company educating them. Um, and a lot of customers are like, you know, my property’s been looking great.
Do I, I’ve had a customer say, um, my property looks great, you know, are, are you guys really doing much when you come? And this is one of our customers that we go weekly to. And I’m like, oh my gosh, this is hilarious. I’m. Sir, let me explain something to you. I explained to a proactive maintenance versus reactive maintenance.
I feel like a lot of our accounts that we have, we go to very often, and the majority of ’em are mostly proactive garden maintenance. So touching up with a hand pruners, you know, that leaflet lit, that little branch that has grown three four inches off of the main bush. You know, just doing a little clip here, something the customer doesn’t notice.
Proactively going in there and making sure that it doesn’t look wild instead of reactive maintenance, which is after it’s grown like crazy. I always use this analogy after your hair is grown out, um, two weeks past your normal haircut, and then coming in there and getting a big, big buzz cut makes the customer feel good, um, that they had that reactive and now there’s such a big difference.
Um, but there’s nothing better than to have your landscaping looking, almost perfect Year round, because we’re always on top of it. I think that’s one of the big things that makes us, makes us different is we’re not going to necessarily go out and cut your grass and, and do all of your basic stuff that the anybody can do.
We’re gonna do more of your higher, higher level specialty things, um, that really mattered in your landscape. Like Eric was saying, trimming your bushes and pruning. With the hand pruners and not trimming off all the blooms. I mean, I can’t tell you how many HOAs just come in there with the hedgers and just, it’s uh, it’s pretty saddening, especially when we do an install with Pier and.
We make this nice, beautiful, beautiful design and about a year into it, everything’s blooming and starting to really take off. And then, um, I get a, a text call or email from a customer. Oh my gosh, all my shrubs, are they gonna make it? And yes, they will make it most likely with Leslie really hacked them.
Um, but it’s just, it’s so sad to see the devastation of improper maintenance, what it can do. Um, I think garden service. Is that the heart of trying to service clients so they’re maintained properly? What else do we do over here at Garden Service here? Well, we do offer annual flower change out program.
Mm-hmm. . So in the event that the front yard has a nice area for some annual flowers, they get only to about eight to 10 inches high. Can provide a nice pop of color. We offered that as a regular change out package. Oh yeah. Brittany. Brittany does that for us. Yeah, she does. She’ll actually do, um, if anybody’s interested, she’ll actually come out and do a consultation with you in the design and she can work with some of our other designers and do that.
Um, and, and she’s, uh, she’s very, very good at that. Very talented, enjoys that. Yeah, absolutely. That’s awesome. Sorry, Eric, you, me to cut you off. Were you gonna say something else there? Um, no. Um, we also offer an organic fertilizer program where we utilize biochar that has been inoculated with beneficial, uh, bacteria and microrisal fungi to help give the plants in soil a little added boost of, uh, beneficial nutrients.
Uh, soil microbes to get everything to get going and establish. So yeah. That’s awesome. That, that is definitely some good, good stuff that we can put into the soil there. I’d love to, um, I love to use that along with putting in some new compost for our install jobs, go in the extra mile to make sure that, uh, things are fertilized and have the right soils and all that.
Um, what would you say, Eric, as far as your biggest c. In the industry. Um, cause you’ve been in the industry for quite a while, I’d like to talk about, uh, the Edison Ford States here in a few minutes and your experience there. But overall in the, in your horticulture career, what do you feel like your biggest challenge has been to overcome the heat?
Yeah. Each year, each summer gets hotter and hotter and it stays longer and longer and it’s really become. Very evident that global warming is very real. Um, and when you have a major natural disaster like Hurricane Ian, it’s even more evident. But besides that, really just, uh, trying to stay up with. The latest in what’s going on in the industry, whether that’s the newest plant or the newest pest, to keep an eye out for, um, knowing what new certifications are out there or what new chemicals are on the market that are less harsh than previous chemicals that were available.
Uh, getting to know what other competitors. Doing and how we can set ourselves apart from everyone else. Right? Yeah, absolutely. No, that, that totally makes sense. You know, something that I had a really frustrating time with this year in the garden service was, um, just some of the s we, um, certain customers don’t understand that you can’t spray.
There’s limits on how much you can spray. There’s limits. I mean, this stuff grows back so fast. Um, the, some of the weeds during the summertime here has been, been absolutely horrendous. Um, I mean, obviously we still do a good job, keep on top of it, but there’s almost like 10% of the landscape where you, you just cannot control no matter what.
We were using Sge Hammer and what else were we using to try to get rid of? We’ve used Ranger Pro and which is they’ve all, they show signs of it working and Right. But through my research, it, SGE is one that take is very persistent. It comes back year after year and it’s definitely been a challenge, but we do our best to.
Our clients, right? That there has to be some tolerance. Uh, yes. Everybody loves to have everything immaculate. Mm-hmm. . But in certain situations, we can only apply a chemical to at a certain rate, and we have to give ample amount of time for that chemical to do its job, which it has been specifically made to.
Right. Not everything is immediate. Not everything shows signs of working the next day. So making sure that when we do an application of a, like for a certain type of pest, if the client didn’t see us spray the plant, well that’s because we’ve perhaps used a type of soil pesticide where we can actually put a tablet in the ground so we don’t have to actually be spraying anything that’s.
Much less harmful to beneficial insects and the applicator. So there are other ways, and we always try to select the least harmful. That’s, um, through using best management practices or BMPs. Mm-hmm. . And that’s how we decide how to handle a situation. So you mentioned beneficial. What I mean for, for our listeners that.
Don’t understand what you mean. What, what’s the difference between a beneficial and a negative pest other than the obvious ones good ones bad, and what are some, maybe some examples of each, each of those? So a pest, a, a bad pest would, could be like an aphid or mm-hmm. , mealy bugs. Um, anything that’s going to cause direct harm to the ornamental plant in question.
Um, a be. Pest or insect is usually the common word is at some phase in its life going to prey upon and feed upon the pests, the negative pests. So ladybugs are a great example that they love to feed on aphids when they’re in the label stage and in their adult stage. That’s pretty awesome. I actually, I was doing some research on that.
Earlier this year and uh, I ordered, I found that. So you can release, you can buy butterflies and then you can release them. Um, and I’m trying to remember all of it, but you need, you know, certain, a few certain plants around where you release those ladybugs so that way they’ll kind of stick around and almost protect your landscape and eat some of the bad pests.
Um, but oh my gosh, it’s pretty unbelievable on Amazon you can. Like tens of thousands of ladybugs, like little, little baby ones. And they’re baby stages and, um, they can, they’re literally in a box. They get shipped to you and you open ’em up and it’s like, it’s pretty crazy. Um, and that don’t do it inside.
Yes. Don’t not do that inside. But that is a very creative way to do. Integrated management. Um, it’s very, very untraditional, but that’s one of the things that I like to do at Garden Service Company. Um, we don’t necessarily offer that yet, but as we grow and develop as a company, I want to do things that other people aren’t doing that are different.
I want to do different studies and. Um, really leverage, uh, you know, if the University of, uh, Florida, their programs that they have, they do tons of research and I really wanna leverage and be able to try these things that other people aren’t doing just because everything’s so profit driven. And, um, you know, I get it to the point, you know, everybody’s gotta.
Gotta take care of their bills. But, um, you know, once we kind of get that past, that part, you know, making our profit and growing and having a steady savings in the company, starting to learn, investigate, grow in other areas, um, especially in areas that a lot of other companies don’t focus, um, I’m a huge believer in having a niche focused business of, so not going off in too many different direct.
But really offering value-driven service that nobody else is offering. And so that’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about Fort Myers Garden Service and everything we do, and Eric carries out for us there. Um, that’s just being different. Being different, getting to do different things. Um, Eric, you’ve mentioned some of your dreams, some of your passion about the growing foods and vegetables.
Share a little bit about your passion and the, maybe the part that you had at the food forest at FG c u. Um, you wanna talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so I went to Florida Gulf Coast University and I got a bachelor’s in environmental study with a minor in biology. Uh, it’s crazy to think how long ago that was now.
Cause I’m, they’re not even that old. Still mind boggling. Mm-hmm. . But while I was there, I got involved in the Permaculture Design certification course, which works in and around the food forest at FG c u. So Permaculture design is a theory just as much as it is a practice on. To grow food in an ecological manner versus our traditional agricultural, uh, and, and getting involved with working with plants.
I fell in love with them and decided, well, this is what I want to do for a career. So my goal and dream. To teach people how to grow food at their house, and I have the best opportunity ever worth Fort Myers Garden Service to do so. Um, more than ever people are interested in growing their own food, partially food cost, partially because of knowing what is on or in your food is really appealing to people.
And then just the connection that people have when they grill their own food is unlike anything you can find in a restaurant or a grocery store. Right. So it, it is catching on. Um, but I’ll be, the first thing I tell people is growing food in South Florida is completely different than anywhere else in the country where they may have been very successful before.
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