LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. – Don Mylin was only going to do it for one year. It would be good publicity for his business, which was celebrating its 10th anniversary, and the new tree transplanter he’d purchased.
That was in 1992.
On Tuesday, Mylin and his company, Millwood Landscape & Transplanting, were still at it.
They unearthed a 30-foot white spruce, wrapped the giant root ball in burlap and hauled it into Penn Square, where they set it up with the tree transplanter and secured it on what turned out to be a mighty windy day.
The tree, which is the centerpiece of Lancaster City’s holiday festivities, was lighted in a ceremony Friday night.
As always, Mylin donated his time and equipment. And when the time comes, he’ll return to take it away and plant it somewhere.
Through the years, Mylin has donated tens of thousands of dollars worth of work and numerous trees to the city celebration. In more recent years, people have donated trees, but for many years, Mylin had to find and purchase the tree himself.
He donated a number of trees to parks, including Buchanan Park and Long’s Park. Generally, trees like the one in the square cost about $2,000.
But Mylin hasn’t missed a year since 1992.
“It takes about an hour now, but when we first did it, it took about three hours,” Mylin says. “It’s probably the most stressful job we’ve got. It’s not just handling the tree, but it’s dealing with people. The first couple of years, people were right there, all over the square.”
When a tree weighs five tons and it’s 30 feet high, you don’t really want people hanging around right underneath it while you’re trying to secure it with cables.
One year, the tree actually fell when one of the cables broke.
“I got a call. What were we going to do? The tree was laying over,” Mylin recalls. “So we put a new cable on it that wasn’t rusty.”
Mylin, 45, of Willow Street, laughs easily as he recalls the trials and tribulations of supplying the city with a living tree every Christmas. It’s all in a day’s work for Mylin, who’s been involved in the landscaping business since college, continually innovating and trying new ways of doing things.
That tree transplanter was one example.
“It cost $100,000 but it was a good investment,” Mylin says.
One of Millwood’s jobs was doing the landscape construction for the Oaks, a development behind the state police barracks in East Lampeter Township. The job required planting a lot of trees. He’d heard about these tree transplanters and thought it would be smart to invest in one and begin specializing.
The machine, which wraps four giant metal arms around the roots of the tree and forces it out of the earth or places it back into the ground, helped increase Mylin’s business and keeps him fairly busy in the winter since he can plant trees throughout the year.
“Landscaping is an easy business to get into, so there’s a lot of competition on the lower end,” Mylin says. “You’ve got to be innovative.”
Back in 1982, Mylin introduced hydroseeding to the area. It’s a method of planting lawns by spraying a combination of mulch, water and seed onto an empty lawn. The results were quick and very green.
But Mylin had a tough time convincing architects that they should use it in their plans.
“It always made sense to the homeowner, but the architects were slower to change,” Mylin recalls. “Now it’s the standard for new homes.”
So much a standard that Mylin knew he had to shift his focus. That’s when the tree transplanting came along.
A lot of big projects came his way in the 1980s and early 1990s, including the landscape construction for Willow Valley, Rockvale Square and Kendig Square.
Usually, Mylin had the freedom to design the landscaping and choose the plants and trees he thought would work best.
A lot of factors go into landscaping.
Mylin has to worry about what kind of trees and shrubs to plant. Will the fruit they bear be a problem? Will they attract bees? Will they be hale and hearty and easy to take care of?
And, especially for shopping areas, they have to attract attention.
He’s often planting thousands of brightly colored annuals in the spring.
Then there are pathways and gazebos and other hard landscaping that offer a wide variety of design choices.
“I work best with a broad brush, an open canvas, “ Mylin says.
As the building boom progressed, Mylin’s business was thriving and he had between 20 and 25 employees.
And he was working all the time.
“We would take every job that came along. We were always working,” he says. “Now, we specialize more and we can spend more time with the kids.”
Mylin and his wife, Sandy, have three kids, Teal, 16, Talia, 14, and Truman, 11. All three are avid soccer nuts and their parents coach.
Mylin, who grew up on a farm, met his wife back in high school at Lampeter-Strasburg and they’ve been together ever since, marrying in 1980, while they were both in college at Penn State. They both graduated from the horticultural program.
Sandy Mylin is a floral landscaper and it’s obvious from looking at their home, an old sprawling farmhouse and its three acres, that the two enjoy the outdoors. There are pathways, patios, ponds and interesting plantings everywhere.
Mylin first got involved in landscaping back when he was attending Penn State in York, intending to get a business degree.
He got a summer job at a landscaping company and by the end of the season, he was overseeing a crew of 20. He returned the following summer and realized it wasn’t too hard being the boss.
“I can’t stand to sit around and do nothing,” he says. “After two summers, I figured I could do it for myself. I have my own way of doing things. I figure I better do it myself or I’ll be miserable.”
Every year, Mylin likes attending the tree lighting ceremony and is happy to know that the huge tree that sits in the square will have a long life somewhere else after the holidays are over.
Folks who work and shop downtown have more than just the Christmas tree to thank Mylin for. He’s the one who got rid of those stinky gingko trees 10 years ago and replaced them with well behaved black gum trees.