2011 is coming to a close and as we celebrate our 25th anniversary, I am amazed at the evolution and growth that Groundworks has seen. What began as a chance opportunity taken by a smalltime purchaser for a landscape contractor developed into an amazing journey and the creation of a specialized market niche that continues to expand beyond our wildest dreams. One has to drive only a short distance anywhere in Florida, Louisiana or Texas to see Medjool Date Palms. And the more you see, the more you realize how truly amazing the Groundworks story is. Join George as he takes us back in time twenty five years where our story begins.

Groundworks was established in 1986. At the time, I was working as a purchaser for Raintree Landscape and having developed a clear understanding of Florida landscape material and the customer supplier network within the industry, I decided it was time to strike out on my own. Everybody needs to start somewhere and my somewhere was small closet in my house that served as an office and a pickup truck borrowed from my extremely generous former employer, Scott Brown. My first deal was created out of an abandoned 20 acre field of high quality landscape material I located. Having discovered who owned the land, I approached him with a proposition: in exchange for a lease on the land at one dollar per year, I would revitalize and market the existing inventory, paying him off with highly favorable rates of return.

After closing that deal, I used what little money I had and hired labor to assist me in cutting down the weeds, erecting a sign and generally transforming the place to look like an active nursery. At one point when my resources were nearly exhausted, I got wind of a local landscape contractor who needed 200 Live Oak trees for a contract. I was able to convince them to take a look at "mine" and a deal was struck. I asked for and received a deposit on the sale, which was used to make a down payment on the tractor I needed to harvest and load the order. It was a close call - followed by so many more throughout our first ten years in business.

As time passed, I found that while we were able to generate revenues through the sale of material growing on the 20 acres, we were also being solicited for orders of material not grown there. Through the use of the network I had developed as a purchasing agent for Raintree, I was able to fill many of those orders at a nice profit. This scenario generated so much cash flow that it became obvious to me that a new landscape materials brokerage was in demand and that Groundworks could be that brokerage. In late 1987 we pioneered a unique concept we called Groundwork's "Tree Center 1." The Tree Center concept was very successful and our current sales strategy contains many components of that original concept. At the time that Groundworks’ Tree Center 1 was put into place, there was nothing like it in South Florida. We bought in and held mature field material above ground, hardened off and available for instant pick up or delivery. The concept has since been copied many times over and I am reminded and warmed every time I drive by a Tree Center type facility. Through hard work, good marketing and lots of luck Groundworks survived its first two years, gained a little market recognition and turned a small but respectable profit.

In late 1988, economic conditions began to shift and decline. I recognized that the strong construction market that had fueled our beginnings simply wouldn’t continue at the same frenzied pace. The slow down and ensuing relaxed demand signaled to me that the overall need for brokerage services would also decline and therefore, I would need to find a new direction or specialty that would set us apart from the competitors. I found it in the area of specimen palms.

While acting as a broker I became aware of the demand for field collected Canary Island Date palms. The state of the art at the time involved calling one of the few “collectors” and then hoping and praying that they would actually show up on the day they were supposed to (they rarely did) and that what came off the truck would meet the spec on the job. We had ordered this material many times while I worked at Raintree and I remembered what a crap shoot it always was. I figured that if we were to buy in, harvest and stock these palms as we did all of the other material we were selling, landscapers could order, tag and take delivery of the palms with little or no notice. At the time I was sensing an impending slowdown in our brokering business and thought to use Canariensis as our niche product. It was during this timeframe in the late 80’s that I began concentrating my efforts in the highly specialized field of specimen Phoenix Genus palms.

Initially, our emphasis was directed at the Phoenix canariensis. P. canariensis has been utilized heavily in landscape design in the US and elsewhere for decades. As our business in this segment grew and we began to develop a customer base, I initiated training programs for our field employees designed to teach them about these peculiar palms and how to solve the problems associated with their relocation and establishment. The training material was primarily derived from my own observations and experiences with the palms we had under warranty. The need to understand the palms drove the creation of a maintenance program that had our people returning to the sites and servicing the palms throughout the warranty period, a practice unheard of at the time. As the number of palms we had in the field multiplied so did our understanding of them and with time Groundworks developed a level of expertise that set us apart from other providers. Our internal intent at the time was to avoid debilitating warranty losses via proper maintenance techniques but what came about over time was a burgeoning reputation as a knowledgeable, responsible supplier.

As our reputation grew, we established a standard of service that forced our competitors to play catch up. The industry had never before encountered a provider who actually returned to service their palms for the entire year of the warranty or that actually understood the problems encountered with this material and how to solve them. During this time I was learning a great deal about these palms but I was also beginning to grasp the extent of loss rates associated with this transplanted material. For a multitude of reasons the loss rate at transplant for field collected Canariensis is high and no amount of post installation service was going to change that. Our maintenance efforts could and often did save palms that were on the edge but a certain percentage just never began the re-rooting process and we could not prevent the losses.

Strongly motivated by this margin that no amount of experience or knowledge could eradicate, in late 1989 I began to seek an alternative specimen tree or palm that Groundworks could sell to increase our revenue stream. At the time, it was commonly believed that all of the single stem Phoenix genus palms that could be utilized in Florida's environmental conditions were already in use. I too accepted this as fact until one day in October of 1989 when a chance encounter in a health food store triggered a chain of events that has literally changed the face of Landscape Architecture in the southeastern United States and the Caribbean. As it happened, while shopping for vitamins I noticed something that struck the horticulturist in me as odd; If God only made one palm that produces edible dates, (a palm I knew to be Phoenix dactylifera) why was I standing there looking at three different kinds of dates? I mean a date’s a date, right? I soon came to learn that a date is definitely not a date. At that point I began closely reexamining the P. dactylifera.

Driven initially by curiosity more than anything else, I did some research and uncovered a simple yet astonishing fact that was unknown to Florida Landscape professionals at the time. I discovered that dactylifera was the only species of the Phoenix genus that had true sub-varieties! This revelation carried startling implications for us in the Southeast and triggered a storm of questions in me. Was it possible that there existed one or more sub-varieties that would perform well under our wet conditions? If so, was there a sufficient quantity available to have an impact on our market? Curiosity developed into an exciting realm of possibilities.

As the weeks passed I learned more about this peculiarity of the Phoenix genus. The Phoenix genus is comprised of many species that we in Florida believed to be singular, meaning without sub-varieties. A sub-variety is a plant of the same genus and species that carries different characteristics as a result of hybridization. It was sensible to me that the individual sub-varieties might carry the genealogical characteristics of their particular predecessors. So while one variety of a given species may not be suitable for a specific cultural scenario - another might! It wasn’t all that long before I unearthed the magical question and its incredible answer. That question was: Is there a sub-variety that was a product of an environment at all similar to ours? The answers came with time and trial but the condensed version is that that indeed there was. This variety is a native of the Atlantic coastal region of Morocco called Phoenix dactylifera Medjool. This “Medjool” produces a thick tropical canopy, is available in somewhat limited quantities in Southern California and no one was using them in landscaping. Holy shit, talk about goose bumps. Now my only tasks were to locate a supplier, find the money to buy some, prove to myself and then to the industry that they would work, convince skeptical landscape architects to spec them, offer free warranties to any landscaper who would try them - all the while keeping myself and my fledging company out of bankruptcy. On one hand, we had basically no money, a brand new barely recognized reputation, and no real credibility with Landscape Architects. 95% of the industry said that they wouldn’t work and don’t use them. On the other hand, we also had me and I knew that I was on the right track. I knew it deep in my heart, I was high on the possibilities and I wasn’t going to give up no matter what the “Industry Icons” said. I believed and they didn’t understand, yet. That would change.

Dactylifera is a species within the Phoenix genus that had been experimented with in Florida during the early seventies. It was a dismal failure. Professionals at the time determined that the species did not acclimate well to high moisture and humidity. As a result of these early experiences, it became common knowledge that while the other Phoenix genus palms did well here in Florida, P. dactylifera would not work under our environmental conditions. It was completely ignored and until October of 1989 no one bothered to investigate P. dactylifera further. Things began to change quite rapidly after that time. My curiosity led to research, which in turn unraveled why the previous attempts to utilize P. dactylifera in Florida had failed. The sub variety utilized in those early applications was the common date palm known as Phoenix dactylifera "Deglett Noor" a sub variety native to the deep Algerian desert. Today the "Deglett Noor" comprises about 70% of all P. dactylifera available in the U.S., but in the early seventy's it was closer to 90%. While this sub variety does very well under desert conditions it was unsuccessful when introduced into our high humidity, poor drainage and heavy rainfall. Degletts simply did not appear to acclimate well and they tended to shed fronds soon after transplant. Having fairly sparse canopies under ideal circumstances, losing even a few of their fronds left them looking weak and insubstantial. At that time, the availability of other sub varieties was so limited that their existence was nearly unknown and none that we knew of were ever tried. The "Medjool" and "Zahidi" sub varieties remained virtually anonymous until we "discovered" them 20 years later and proved their reliability here in disease central.

Having proven to myself that the species would work, I became convinced that through intensive marketing and educational efforts these two relatively obscure sub varieties could become a smashing success in our market. During 1991 and 1992, Groundworks spent tens of thousands of borrowed dollars on marketing and research. Almost daily I was forced to argue my position with leading Landscape Architects and other industry leaders who insisted that this material had "not worked then and it won't work now."

Eventually, design and installation professionals, seeing with their own eyes the accuracy of our assertions about the Medjool and Zahidi, began using them in increasing numbers. Though nearly broken by the effort, we succeeded in lighting a fire that has spread across five states and the Caribbean and has established us firmly as the absolute leader in our field in the Southeast. In terms of gross volume, this newly available product generated an annual market that has grown from absolute zero in 1989 to an estimated $20 million dollars today and the utilization of this material continues to grow at an astonishing rate.

This brings us back to the present and concludes our story – for now. I’m sure you will agree that it has been quite an amazing journey. What the future holds cannot be foreseen. What is certain is that I, along with my coworkers are thrilled to be a part of Groundworks today. We are proud of all that Groundworks represents. Furthermore, we are excited by the bright prospects for the future and envision our destinies linked to the continued success of this company.

December 16 2011
With 25 years now in the books Groundworks of Palm Beach County Inc. in Florida and its business units in Houston Texas are stable, successful and growing. We have lived through & survived an unprecedented degree of turmoil in the landscape industry and we expect that 2012 will again be a transitional year for all of us. As opposed to the transitions we saw coming back in late 2008, this time around we see a far more positive environment developing and we are excited about the months to come. There is no doubt that we still face some very challenging economic circumstances but the broad degree of recession and consolidation that our industry suffered through during the past 30 months has dramatically narrowed the field of competition. This smaller, leaner landscape industry is now starting to feel the effects of the improved supply/demand dynamic and it is having a positive impact on our revenues and margins. During the latter part of 2011, we saw many indications that new demand growth will materialize during early 2012 and that it will accelerate as the year wears on. The diminished capacity of the industry will bear on this scenario during 2012 driving up revenues and margins appreciably.