The Level Green Culture Blog

Behind the scenes and insider information for landscaping careers and green industry jobs.

Should you be in the landscaping business?

Maybe you grow the best wisteria on the block, you name your garden tools, and you’re an organized dynamo. Oh, and you have a degree in landscape management.

You’re a natural, right?

Larry Leon has some questions for you that might be eye opening.

Sometimes the path to your perfect place isn’t straight, like the crisp edge of a newly laid patio, but curving, like a meandering garden path.

Jenna Visco thought she wanted to be a chemist. Then she was pretty sure she wanted to be a landscape designer.

Nope and nope.

Is it a big deal that Dave Briggs has worked at Level Green Landscaping for 15 years?

Depends on who you ask.

Around here, it’s a pretty big deal. Dave was the first account manager to come on board, back in 2005 when just a handful of employees worked here.

But it’s all a matter of perspective, Dave says. His twin brother, Tom, has worked at the same electrical company for 35 years.

Leave it to your twin brother to show you up.

As a landscaping company, Level Green Landscaping does a lot of community outreach that has to do with digging in the dirt, from helping school kids plant vegetables to teaching the community how to create rain gardens.

But our commitment to diversity means we also think outside the planter box.

First things first: yes, that’s a photo of Marcene with famous gymnast Gabby Douglas, two-time gold medalist at the 2012 Olympic Summer Games.

Champions hang out together. 

When Marcene was 10, she was the gymnastics floor exercise champion for the whole state of Maryland.

She spent hours practicing in the gym four nights a week and all day on Saturdays.

“It gave me discipline and focus that I’ve used my whole life,” she says.

When Brian Outten interviewed for a job as shop manager at Level Green Landscaping, co-owner Bill Hardy told him he wouldn’t have to worry about Brian showing up late for work.

Brian served in the U.S. Army, where being punctual is a way of life.

That's just one of the traits Brian brings to his landscaping work, as a military veteran. 

When Brian Outten joined the U.S. Army out of high school, he learned he’d be a 63 Bravo, a light wheel mechanic, changing oil and replacing tires on military vehicles.

Imagine hosting 100 industry professionals at your company, showing them exactly how you run your business, then asking them to tell you what they think about you.

The good — and the not-so-good.

Terrifying? Or invigorating?

It can be a bit of both when Jim Paluch of JP Horizons People Solutions organizes a Face to Face Review at your landscaping company.

Zacharie Jackson was pretty sure she’d be studying bacteria for a living after graduating with a degree in biology from Marymount University.

Then she got her hands in the dirt, during an internship at the National Arboretum in Washington DC, spending her days tending glossy boxwood, bright day lilies and fragrant catmint.

So, when a recruiter contacted her about a job at Level Green Landscaping, that career studying bacteria would have to wait.

The plants were calling.

Hector Diaz learned how to work hard at an early age, growing up with seven siblings on his parents’ small farm in Guatemala. 

They grew corn and beans and raised cattle, dairy cows, pigs and chickens.

“I started feeding cows when I was 7 or 8 years old, after school,” Hector says. “Ever since we were little, my father would tell us, ‘We are not rich, so I can’t give you money. But I’ll teach you to work hard, and by doing that, I know you’ll be successful in life.’”

His dad was right.