When asked why he has been so successful over the years, Charlie Bowers pauses for a moment and then responds with two words “being selective.” For the owner of Garden Gate Landscaping in Silver Spring, Maryland, a successful landscape contracting business is built on three legs: product and service, employees, and customers. The most successful contractors carefully select a service niche and then find employees to deliver the product and service and loyal customers who understand the value of their work. Sounds like a plan!

Bowers initiated the plan early on in his career. After graduating from college in 1965 with a degree in horticulture, he worked for Garden Gate Nursery in a sales support position for the company’s residential installation division. After four years, Bowers and another employee purchased that division and launched their own company, Garden Gate Landscaping.

Quality Work

“One of the first decisions we made was to discontinue bidding jobs,” Bowers recalls. “The level of service we wanted to provide did not line up with bid work. Instead of being the low bidder on jobs, we wanted to work with homeowners who appreciated the value of quality work.” Immediately, the company brought the design function in-house and started to select its own customers, not on price but on their desire to have quality landscaping. That one decision transformed Garden Gate Landscaping into a design/build company long before the term became popular.

“The transition from bid work to design/build was not an easy one,” Bowers admits. “There were times when we did not make any money on a project, because we may have underestimated the time it would take to complete the job. Other times, customers may have wanted something that they thought was part of the original design, but was not. We tried to satisfy them anyway because we understood their value and wanted to build loyalty.”

The company grew slowly, adding a salesperson and a crew as necessary, all the while maintaining contact with customers. When customers moved, they looked to Garden Gate for landscaping services. When they purchased their landscaping in stages, they contacted Bower’s team to initiate phase two or three of a project, sometimes several years after the initial stage was completed.

This type of loyalty does not develop naturally, Bowers points out. Owners have to be committed to customers and they have to have employees with the same level of commitment — the other part of Garden Gate’s selection equation. “Recruiting is so important,” Bowers emphasizes, “Then, once you find the right people, you have to retain them,” adding that getting employee loyalty is just as important and requires just as much effort as retaining customer loyalty.

Maintenance, Too