Environmental Insights

Most landscape designers have to work in the industry for a while before they start earning accolades. Not Robert Arrington. Robert got his first taste of the landscape industry in FFA while in high school, where he was part of both the nursery landscape and floriculture teams. He had the chance to compete in the national competition for nursery landscape where the team placed 3^rd overall. Robert says his experience drawing up a landscape plan to meet guidelines for the competition was pivotal to his decision to pursue a career in the landscape industry.

Got a call recently from some friends who had just returned from a trip to Spain. While there, they fell in love with the simple but formal European garden look – the sculpted topiaries, pollards, and tasteful incorporation of architectural elements in the landscape. Could we recreate something like that for them?

Looking for a job is a full time job in itself. And because it’s a job with zero upfront benefits and no pay (yet), it’s tempting to simply grab job opportunities as they arise and hope they will work out OK. But taking a bit of time to sort out in advance whether a company is a good match for you helps both you and your prospective employer.

When you walk into an interview knowing a company is a good fit, it gives you a boost of confidence that will help you stand out from the crowd. And, finding a work environment that suits your personality and working style will make a big difference in how fulfilled you feel once you actually start working there—as well as advancement and career opportunities down the road.

At T. Lake, we’re busy. Really busy. Which is why we’re always interested in speaking with potential new hires—but to be quite open and frank, only if there’s a good chance we’ll be a happy match. So before you reach out to us, here are a few job seeking tips to help you decide if T. Lake is the right company for you.

Every once in a blue moon, a technology comes along that radically changes the way we do things. The advent of computer aided design (CAD) in the 1960’s heralded an incredible explosion in capabilities in all areas of design. Landscape design is, of course, no exception, but it does present certain challenges.

Unlike many other types of design, which can be executed in a purely conceptual manner, in landscape design we have to work with existing terrain. This means that proper assessment and surveying of the site is critical – not an easy task given the scale and accessibility issues involved.

If you have any background in IT, you know that that no matter how sophisticated the programming or talented the programmer, the quality of input data is critical to outcome. This applies to CAD as well. That’s why we are over-the-top excited to put our new Phantom 4 landscape drone to work on landscape design projects.

Happy Valentine’s! If you’ve been following our blog lately, you’ve probably already taken note of our love affair with our new DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 quadcopter landscape drone. In fact, we’ve become rather infatuated with it. Not because drones are cool (which they are), but also because of the sheer multitude of ways our drone saves time, saves money, and generally makes life and landscaping a lot easier both for us and our commercial landscape  construction and landscape maintenance clients.

“But wait!”  I hear you say. “That’s all very well for massive commercial projects. But what about your residential customers?”

Well, if you’re thinking of upgrading your residential landscape this spring or summer, there’s plenty of love in the air for you, too.

We just can’t get enough of our new Phantom 4 drone. As we explained in our last post,  we purchased it as a safety and efficiency solution for a commercial construction project. And it is proving to be an absolute workhorse on commercial construction and civil engineering jobs.

But that’s turning out to be just the tip of the iceberg. We’re finding that the drone has applications for virtually everything we do here at T.Lake. Today, let’s take a look at what a drone can bring to commercial landscape maintenance projects.

A few weeks ago, we introduced our new landscape drone, the DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 quadcopter. In that post, we told the story of the commercial earthwork project that inspired us to invest in this little beauty. Now, let’s take a closer look at exactly how useful a landscaping drone can be on a commercial construction or civil engineering job.

So here we are again: poised at the end of another year, and staring down the barrel of the next. 

A couple weeks back we posted an introduction to our newest team member- our Phantom 4 drone. And I have to admit, since the Phantom arrived it’s been serious drone fever around here. Drones are not only fun and cool, but that little gizmo is also proving to be one of the most useful gadgets ever invented, from a landscape company’s perspective.

But, there’s another side to drone ownership.

As a landscape company, we have to satisfy lots of different regulatory agencies. There is a long list of things a landscape services company must do to stay legal and compliant. Many people aren’t aware of what goes into landscape industry compliance. This is unfortunate, because not every landscape company does all these things consistently—and when they don’t, it can put their clients at risk.

We’re always excited to welcome new team members, especially when they bring diversity and new skills to our team. This fall, we are extra pumped to introduce the newest and most uniquely talented member of the T.Lake team: our brand new DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 quadcopter drone!