New Hampshire Landscape Contractors Scramble to Catch Up After Stormy Spring

This spring's wacky weather has taken its toll in several parts of the country, and now landscape contractors looking to spring planting are scrambling to make up for lost time caused by April's snow and rain.

With countless trees felled in New Hampshire from last month's storms, many landscapers are being forced to work on clean up before they can begin their planting seasons.

"It's unbelievable," said Russ Warwick of Warwick Landscaping and Pressure Washing of Dover, as he worked to move mounds of branches and debris from a home in Barrington.

"The late heavy snow after the thaw is what killed them. It's been non-stop trees, non-stop."

Warwick, who started mowing lawns at age 12, said he would typically spend May planting, but has instead been inundated with tree removal jobs, more than 30 so far. While the added work is a nice windfall, Warwick said it also compromises his ability to finish the rest of his landscaping jobs.

"I'm really, really busy and I've got a lot of jobs backed up on me," he said. He said getting an early start every day, brand-new heavy equipment and word-of-mouth recommendations help him keep his customers happy. He can be reached at 988-5208.

The Barrington home Warwick worked on, owned by Fred Knight, had a stack of dead trees piled in the driveway, victims of the storm. Each needed to be removed along with piles of debris around the property. The task can be time consuming and affect his other jobs, Warwick said, adding that he continues to bring in jobs by keeping his prices very low.

Other landscapers reported similar backups as April's weather radically shifted their work schedules and pushed jobs back.

In Exeter

New Hampshire Landscape Association President Diane Perkins said customers need to be understanding this year as landscapers got a much later start to their planting season than usual.

Perkins, who owns Fertile Ground in Exeter, said she's so backed up with jobs that she can't get to planting for new customers until late June.

Normally, landscaping can begin as early as March, though it typically starts in April, Perkins said. But April's weather, first with the snow and then the rain, made planting impossible and wreaked havoc on many trees and yards, she said.

Another result of the weather was a drastically shortened blooming time for flowers, Perkins said. Whereas spring flowers would normally bloom over a period of months as different varieties blossom, April's cold weather pushed many early bloomers back while other later bloomers kept on schedule, compacting the blooming period to a matter of weeks, she said.

The changing schedules, both in work and blooming, can make customers think twice about getting landscape work done, Perkins said.

"People will say to me, 'well the geraniums didn't get in until the end of May so I don't know whether we'll get them,'" she said. "I don't think people would ever shy away from cleanup or anything like that, but there would be people who will put projects off if they get bumped down."

Still other landscapers say April's weather caused more unforeseen problems.

In Rochester

John Batson, of Jenesis Gardens & Design in Rochester, said he works with two golf courses, one in Dover and the other in Maine, whose irrigations systems were damaged by the late freeze as rocks underground were pushed upward by the cold and damaged pipes.

Batson, who is vice president of the New Hampshire Landscape Association, said the winter's initial mild temperatures also hurt flowers. With temperatures in December and January hitting record highs, many flowers began blooming far earlier than they were supposed to.

While Russ Warwick removes trees, many landscapers don't and have instead been hurt by the lack of work in April because of that month's snow and rain, Perkins said. The weather meant three weeks of prime cleanup and planting time was shut down, she said, and now landscapers are forced to make up for that lost time.

The weather did mean brisk business for tree removal business though, Perkins said.

"Basically bad weather is definitely a windfall for them," she said.

On the other hand, landscapers are at the mercy of bad weather.

"I don't think landscapers benefit at all from any kind of extreme weather whether it's drought or flood or winds," Perkins said.

The key to keeping customers happy is to make sure they understand the effect bad weather had on landscaping, Perkins said, a task easier said than done.

"I think patience is a really big word," she said. "You do have to be patient"