One Size Doesn't Fit All: T&O Services

Surveys of the readership of Lawn & Landscape magazine in recent years conducted by Research USA, Chicago, tree and ornamental care has consistently ranked in the top five fastest growing business segments for contractors.

However, not everyone who has entered the tree care realm has come away with good feelings and hefty profits. For example, when Philip Fred, president of Philip’s Lawn & Tree Therapy, Mooresville, Ind., started out in business on his own in 1987, the plan was to grow the business in both lawn and tree care services.

Ten years later, the lawn care side has flourished, but his tree care services have remained relatively stagnant. The lawn care side took off, so I focused on lawn care from the start, explained Fred. Today, we downplay tree care.

Fred still provides quality tree care services to present and prospective clients, but doesn’t actively market it. With trees and shrubs, there are so many variables in pests and weather that routes can get very inefficient, he explained. It’s also been difficult to cross-train technicians.

There’s definitely money to be made out there, but it’s tough to be multi-disciplinary, he said.

Obviously, there is a difference between merely offering a service and making it grow. Contractors that say they have a thriving tree care business provided their insight into creating a profitable tree care business as a lawn care contractor.

KEEPING IT TOGETHER. For some companies, the best way to make lawn care and tree care services flow is to train the employees to perform services on both trees and turf. This is how the program has worked for the 18 years it has been offered at Liqui-Green Lawn & Tree Care, Bloomington, Ill., according to David Harris, vice president.

Some of our lawn care technicians have been trained in tree spraying, which has helped us because we treat the two services equally, noted Harris, who also indicated that their business is about half tree care and half lawn care.

We provide a full spray program, including both preventive and curative treatments for certain diseases and insects, he continued. We will also provide deep root feeding, and, when necessary, we will use a microinjection system for nutrients and pesticides when it’s most beneficial.

Outside of cross-training employees, little else crosses over between lawn and tree services. It’s on a completely different routing schedule from lawn care, stressed Harris. Most times, you’re waiting for a good time to go out and do the spraying (for specific pests) because it is difficult to predict when these problems will manifest themselves in the landscape. Timing is absolutely critical.

To help determine when to treat for a given problem, Harris and others on staff will observe trees on the company’s grounds and certain customers’ yards to determine the best treatment timing.

Tom Hofer, president, Spring Green Lawn Care, Plainfield, Ill., said that each of his franchises approaches tree care somewhat differently depending on the market and the franchisee’s own ambitions to grow that part of the business. The best performing tree care divisions among the franchises make up about 30 percent of the bottom line. It varies a lot among the owner-operators, said Hofer. Some don’t do tree care at all, and some are very intense about growing that part of the business.

Hofer said that it’s up to each individual franchise owner to as to how they approach tree care. Some have technicians doing both tree and lawn care on the same routing, but more keep the tree care routing separated.

It depends on what area of the country you’re in as well, added Hofer. In the northern markets, trees get one or two deep-root feedings each year and a couple of insect sprays, but in the southern markets you’ll have the feedings and four or more additional treatments depending on the length of the season. The more complex the treatment program is, the more difficult it is to put both lawn and tree care on congruent schedules.

SEPARATE BUT EQUAL. Many other successful tree care companies that also perform lawn care services have found success by separating the two entities into individual profit centers. This is the setup at Green Seasons Lawn & Tree Care, Dover, Del., explained Wayne George, Sr., president. The company has been doing tree care for 18 of its 22 years in business, and provides deep root feedings and pest monitoring and control for trees and ornamental plants.

The individual that runs the division is certified with the International Society of Arboriculture and the Delaware Nurserymen’s Association and maintains a pesticide license. The certifications are important to gaining credibility with the customer and making the sale, George noted.

We tell customers that if there’s a difficult problem with a tree or shrub in their landscape, we have a certified arborist on staff that we can send out to provide an accurate diagnosis, stressed George.

The company used to do all blanket spraying of trees for insect and disease problems, but about eight years ago adopted a plant health approach that only uses pesticides when necessary. The main concern was mounting pressure from customers and their neighbors about drift, as well as concerns regarding the amount of pesticides that the company was using, George noted.

George said the plant health approach reduced pesticide consumption at Green Seasons at least 60 percent for trees and ornamentals in the first few years and significantly decreased he number of irate calls from neighbors.

When prospective customers call in to the office, a tree care specialist visits and performs a survey of the plant material in the landscape. Depending on the plants to be cared for and the scope of the property, the technician will recommend a program requiring from four to eight visits per season. The uniqueness of plant material makes it difficult to standardize a program for tree and shrub care, George noted.

On some properties, you may have one species of plant that has a problem with just one pest at a certain time of the year, explained George. In these cases, a two-visit program would be proper. In other cases, he continued, a variety of plant material with more than one pest or disease pressure during a season may require more visits to monitor and treat when necessary.

Eight inspections per season sounds like a high number, but it’s really the only way to effectively monitor sites with diverse plant material. George noted that not every visit results in a treatment, and that the technician leaves extensive notes about what was found and what treatments were performed, if any. It’s important to let customers know whenever you visit the site, he stated.

Green Seasons also handles customer emergency calls on damaged plant material, but it charges a fee for assessing the problem and suggesting a solution. If we perform the service, the estimate cost is deducted from the final bill, explained George. Frankly, if the customer doesn’t hire us because of the fee, then they were probably more interested in having us diagnose a problem so they could fix it themselves. Charging this fee adds to peoples’ perception of us as a professional company.

Presently, the tree care division accounts for about 35 percent of the company, and George would like to see further growth. And of all the keys to success, he noted that ongoing training of technicians is most important. Our main strategy is to keep our people trained and educated, stressed George, so they can recognize problems and use the best techniques to diagnose and treat problems.

The author is Managing Editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine.