The Level Green Culture Blog

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

If you’re one of Ryan Rimshaw’s landscaping customers, you’ll get to know each other pretty well.

But there's a lot to discover, so here’s a shortcut.

He collects cars, and has two Jeeps painted exactly like the Jeeps in “Jurassic Park.”

He owns five dogs. He built a train track around his house with a working train you can ride. The dogs love it.

He rode dirt bikes professionally, until one day he crushed a disc in his tailbone — the hazard of doing jumps on a dirt bike at 100 miles per hour.

And if you want to talk landscaping, the Level Green account manager studied it for eight years and owned his own landscaping company.

Mario Argeta Perez shows up to work every morning at Level Green Landscaping a half hour before he has to be there. 

Ask him why he likes the place so much and he talks about “convivir.” It’s one of those Spanish words that’s tough to accurately translate to English.

But it basically means living with others in harmony.

It’s what everybody says about working at Level Green: It’s like a family.

And Mario is like that cousin everybody has who’s always smiling. 

If you can’t find Marion Delano, he might be away. Really far away.

As a kid, Anthony Fuller hated going to the dentist. Those little plastic trinkets kids got afterwards were all that got him through.

‘“I wanted to change that experience for somebody else,” he says. So he majored in biology at Georgetown University and planned to go to dental school.

Then he found out how much it would cost, and that it would take him 11 years to pay off the debt.

New plan: landscaping.

It’s hard to imagine him doing anything else.

When Larry Leon talks about hunters and farmers, you have to wonder what it has to do with landscaping.

Spend any time with Julian Tadeo and you’ll probably learn something about him. A friendly, talkative guy, he has a lot of wisdom to share.

When David Saravia moved to the U.S. from El Salvador in 2004, he landed a job in an Italian restaurant in Maryland, far from his life farming corn and beans.

Clearing snow kicks your butt.

The hours are long, and often through the night. A storm can last for days. The simple act of hopping down from your truck can land you face down on a slick of black ice. (Pro tip: never jump down from your truck in the winter.)

Here’s how Level Green Landscaping prepares its people, from keeping them safe to boosting their morale during this cold, tough work.

Jose Ruiz grew up in balmy El Salvador, where the temperature hovers at 85 degrees, coconut palms and tropical orchids flourish and he worked in sunny fields harvesting beans and corn.

Then, he moved to Boston. In the winter. And got a job shoveling snow.

What must that have been like?

“Aauuugh!” Jose says.

Totally.

He was 24 at the time, and a pretty sturdy guy. But still.

“There were times I thought, ‘What was I thinking?’” he says with a laugh. “It was very, very hard to acclimate to the weather. But I thought, you know what? I’m here now. I made my decision.”

If you have to add another task to your already stuffed to-do list, can you find a blank spot?