How did you get started on the path to where you are now?

[William Douglas]

And what advice would you give to anyone wanting to make landscaping their profession?

 

I am interested in knowing where you started.  For me, I get a good contract every now and again, but if I didn’t get my name out by mowing lawns, I’d still be working at Lowe’s mixing paint getting yelled at by a soul sucking jerk of a manager over trivial matters that hardly ever pertained to me.  Not that its a bad thing to have a little jobby, I just felt that the world had a different use for me.

[Joshua Seyfried]

My high school drafting class got me started on the road to architecture. I spent 1 year in architecture school and decided not for me, and that I wanted to design golf courses. Spent the next 4 years at Michigan State, realizing that I loved landscape architecture but that golf course design wasn’t a very…desirable path to trudge down.

 

-J

[William Douglas]

I wouldn’t know the first thing about golf courses, as I don’t play golf.  I tried.  I was so over par that they had to make a new handicap level just for me.  I’d also imagine the owners of those things being hard to work with. 

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

I used to be a landscaper with a bad back. I had very good training in plant composition from older European landscapers growing up. I saw lots of not so mind boggling landscape plans by LAs and noticed that they had clean finger nails, walked upright, and seemed to be making a better living in a better way than I was. … now at least my nails are clean, the back was always damaged, and I make a decent living.

[Boilerplater]

Henry, was that in South Jersey?  I know NFL Films is headquatered in Mt. Laurel.

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

Ed got inducted into the Hall of Fame this year!

[William Douglas]

Being a grunt is much more fulfilling when you are doing your own grunt work.  Matter of fact, I have a couple jobs lined up in the fall where I will be fixing the problems created by a designer standing and pointing their finger.  One of them, lets just say $100 worth of weedblock fabric on a $10k rock garden could have saved their reputation.  All because they gave a foreman a budget and told him to keep the change.  “We no need eet señor, es only rocks.”  I’m absolutely positive that if he stayed on site for more than 5 minutes he’d have caught that.

[Jason T. Radice]

I started very early on in high school I always had a green thumb and was interested in designing something. My father was an electro-mechanical engineer…so it is in the blood. I later found an interest in Architecture as well. I also explored various tyoes of engineering including electrical and software, but didn’t like either.I had to do an assignment to find a career for a class, so I researched LA, which prior to that point, never knew existed. It combined my inherent design talents, my likes of architecture and gardening, so it seemed perfect. Through the Explorer Scouts, I had set up an ofice visit with a local LA and determined thats what I wanted to do. I was lucky, this was wehn I was a sophomore in HS. By the time I was a junior, I was accepted to a few LA schools.

 

I did the grunt work, too, but to learn materials and maintenance. I did commercial mowing, I worked at a garden center, and spent two years maintaining a botanic garden.

[William Douglas]

Where will you be in 2026?  LOL

 

[William Douglas]

Sounds like you really got it goin on!!  Just wanting to do it is half the battle.  One day I would like to get out of the maintenance aspect of it all, but hindsight 2020, me being on a property regularly tends to get me more biz.  So in the same breath I kinda gotta keep on it.  But I’ll get there eventually I’m sure of it.

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

Then you can appreciate what someone who came from the business end of a shovel brings to the table!

[William Douglas]

Oh by far do I appreciate just about everyone in this line of work.  I’m not sure what you are communicating.  Like, are you mad about something I said?

[William Douglas]

Now I’m all depressed.  I guess I can leave that day open!!  See, you’re teaching us all kinds of stuff, like how it is best to use a pencil when you are writing the schedule!!  😛

[William Douglas]

Im just funnin with you.  Dont be so dramatic.  Besides, I have philosophies of my own too.  One is to just shrug off the words of an arrogant dusty old fart that will be dead in a decade. 

Honestly, I dont even know where this went sour.  Im reading up and it just looks like you are just a jerk.   

[Jason T. Radice]

Yea, I’m lucky. I still know people may age who don’t know what they want to be when they grow up. If they ever grow up. It can be tough to make the transition to maintenance, which is why I never did it since my college summer days. I went right into large scale commercial design. The maintenance aspects are very important though. I see many LAs creating complex landscapes and designs that aren’t taken care or are very difficult or dangerous to take care of. Sombody has to mow your grass on the top of that 20′ retaining wall, you know. DON’T PLANT GRASS THERE, MORON! Being a grunt has influenced my designs greatly, which had led to me exploring low maintenance and site appropriate plants, which has become fashionable thanks to LEED. It all works towards something.

 

I love what I do, I just wish I could do it more, and get paid for it. But this economy has many of us saying “enough already…peace out LA!”. Can’t say I blame them.

[Author]

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