Landscape Operations Manager, Certified Landscape Technician, Certified Green Roof Installer (With Lawrence Park since 1990)
Jim has more experience keeping gardens lush and healthy than just about anyone you’ll ever meet, having devoted almost his entire working life to making gardens beautiful.
Before joining Lawrence Park, Jim had spent several years in landscaping companies gaining experience in planting, pruning and stonework. He also studied Horticulture at Humber College and became a Certified Landscape Technician. Since then, he has taken every opportunity to advance his skills and knowledge by taking Landscape Ontario seminars on best practices in everything from grading, stonework and plant identification to job estimating, crew management and green roof installation. Now he’s studying to become Certified Horticultural Technician.
At present, Jim runs one field crew and oversees three others while acting as liaison between the field staff and office. He loves that Lawrence Park offers such a broad range of services because it provides him and crews with never-ending variety.
“You’re not just doing stonework from April till December. You could be cutting down trees one week and planting them the next. It keeps you fresh – it’s never boring.” He doesn’t mind working in the evenings in order to talk to clients, estimate jobs, or pick up materials on his way home so “the crew can start their work first thing in the morning and not keep our clients waiting.”
He and his crewmembers love to transform gardens and see jobs through from start to finish so they can say: “We made that (and) it’s beautiful.” He particularly loves “going onto a property that hasn’t been pruned or weeded in ages…to completely clean it up and have the client come home at the end of the day, look at it and say: ‘Oh wow!’”