landscaper of the year finalist
Not only did they install the turf for the
Maritime Park stadium, home of the
Blue Wahoos, but they also provided
the installation of the irrigation and
landscaping for the entire park.
There is only a small area of turf, and the rest of this Pensacola
Beach property is planted heavily with natives to stabilize
the soil. West and his team learned from the experience that
vegetation could literally save homes from storms.
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16 To ta l L a n d s c ap eC are.c om
work faster than I could deal with it," West says.
"We were doing maintenance just to try and make
a dollar, but then I started seeing landscaping,
and we were inheriting problems in maintenance
caused by landscaping."
As quickly as the business started to boom, the
company dove head first into landscaping services
to avoid inheriting mistakes. "We started getting
into landscaping really out of necessity because we
would have to either redo what was there or get
into new construction," West says. "We were like,
'Well, we can certainly do it better than what they
did.'"
The business slowly grew, but it was in 1992
when Executive Landscaping got its first taste of
big business.
The company bid on a commercial mall project
in Tallahassee, Florida, which was about a $1 million job. "We probably had no business doing it,
but we got it, and it was a big success," West says.
It was at that point that their concentration shifted
from maintenance to construction.
West put every penny the company made
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