The after of a landscaping job, see the before below.
I have always wanted to own a company ever since I was a little kid. When I was thirteen years old, I started mowing lawns for my neighbors, and over time, I gained more and more clients. I was able to build my company up throughout middle and high school. In the spring of 2024, I combined landscaping companies with a friend and was fortunate enough to operate the company as my internship this past summer. I learned a lot about landscaping and how to grow my company during this internship.
The company is called Garvin Property Services LLC, and we work in the Northern Baltimore County area. Our services range from just cutting grass to planting, removing, and designing garden beds and landscapes for both commercial and residential properties.
Landscaping work can be hard, but it is a very rewarding job. I love being able to start and finish projects, and seeing the landscape transform completely from how it was before. One of my favorite projects involved removing tall grass and weeds from a large garden bed alongside a customer’s driveway. The area looked terrible and was not welcoming at all, so the customer called our company to bring her vision for the area to life. On this project, a worker and I removed all the grasses and weeds, tilled the area, dug holes, and planted six crepe myrtles. Then we laid down a weed barrier and mulched the area. During this job, I learned how to line up trees in a perfect row and space precise holes for them to be planted. When the job was complete, her driveway was transformed into exactly what she wanted, and that was very rewarding to me.
Not everything in this kind of work goes as planned, but part of the job is working around these challenges. For example, one job involved leveling a front yard that did not settle correctly after being dug up for a pipe installation. During this job, we had to shovel dirt off the yard into a trailer. I didn’t accurately calculate how much dirt was going into the trailer, so the amount of weight broke the frame of the trailer as I was driving down the road. This was a valuable learning experience, teaching me to play it safe when hauling a lot of weight and to split it into two loads.
These types of learning experiences from my internship over the summer have helped me further my career goals. When I graduate from college, I hope to continue growing my company and expanding it using the knowledge I gained this past summer. Over the summer, I did a lot of the typical “grunt work” like planting, mowing, and mulching, but I also learned how to handle the paperwork needed to run a company. I gained experience writing invoices, doing sales calculations, drafting contracts, and filing paperwork with the state. I learned that paperwork is just as important as labor when running a company. I hope to gain more experience as I continue working and make my career goals a reality. A fellow landscaper once told me, “It’s all about not making the same mistake twice,” and I believe that is the secret to running a successful company. I am glad I had this internship experience and was able to learn a lot through trial and error.
