- John Redmond Memorial Award
- Best entry from all maintenance categories.
- Stay Green Inc.
- Project Name: Westfield Valencia Town Center
- Award Sponsor: Landscape Contractors Insurance Services, Inc.
What it honors: The best landscape maintenance entry from all maintenance categories.
Who won: Stay Green, Inc., headquartered in Santa Clarita. The corporation has about 200 employees in three departments and serves industrial, commercial and some residential clients in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Stay Green also won the John Redmond award in 2006. The maintenance department is the largest, with about 60 percent of the business; the tree care department represents about 30 percent, and the plant health care services department about 10 percent.
This project: Westfield Valencia Town Center. This upscale mixed-use shopping mall is on a 93-acre site that includes office space, a movie theater and more than 150 stores and restaurants.
Who’s who at Stay Green: Richard and Charlene Angelo founded the business in 1970. Richard is board chairman. Charlene is secretary. The Angelos’ son, Chris, is president. Rene Rivera is vice president of maintenance. Production manager is Rafael Caballero. Account manager on this job is Grant Clack.
What Stay Green is known for: “We’re customer-serviced oriented,” says Richard Angelo. “I know everybody says that, but we really are. We work with--and try to be flexible with--our clients in good times and bad.”
Scope of work: Stay Green is on site six days a week. “We are responsible for maintenance of all the exterior landscaping,” says Angelo about the 297,351-square-foot job. Maintenance includes plant and tree health care and hand-watering of about 260 container pots in a wide range of sizes. In addition, Stay Green maintains all beds and planters, mows and edges the lawn areas, trims all the hedges and cares for all trees in the parking lot. Color beds are changed out three times a year: spring, mid-summer and early to late fall, depending on the weather.
How long has Stay Green maintained this site? 10 years.
What kinds of plantings are there? Boxwood hedgerows, roses, a variety of perennials and shrubbery in pots including raphiolepis, calendula and landscape iris. Trees include African sumac, palms, elms, sycamores and oaks.
Challenge on this job: Temperature extremes. “This mall is in north LA County, north of the San Fernando Valley,” Angelo says. “We get the influence from the Mohave Desert, so our days can get to 106, 107 degrees and our nights can also be warm. ... We also get extremes in the winter; we get freezing ... and we’ve had snow here. The climate is demanding and we can’t let irrigation issues go for long. ... That makes it even more satisfying to win an award for a property that is in such a challenging climate ... We are available 24-hours a day and go out at all times to take care of things.”
Anything else? Because this landscape is on display daily to thousands of shoppers, restaurant patrons and office workers, it is maintained to exacting standards at all times.
What do you think impressed the judges? “We work hard to keep the whole property looking good 12 months of the year,” Angelo says. “Obviously the summer is a challenge for us, but that’s what Stay Green has tried to do over the years--give consistent service to our clients all year round.”
Are you using any sustainable landscape practices? “We’ve been recycling our ‘waste’ products for years; we use a lot of mulch on all our properties and the ‘green waste’ that we generate is chipped or ground up and put back on our jobs.”
Anything you’ve learned on this job you could pass on to your fellow contractors? “We try to keep consistent crews on the property all the time because they get to know the property better and better. ... At the same time, we try to rotate people in and out, sometimes for training purposes. These are ordinary people who do extraordinary work. That’s what our whole industry is about. ... I think the award really goes to the team that’s doing the work--the team that works on it all the time,” Angelo explains. “We try to keep our standards high so our people feel good that we’re always trying to make things better. ... We try to keep the focus on good work for the client, instead of making money. Obviously, it’s a business and you have to make a profit, but there’s a balancing line. We’re always on the side of doing a good job. We want to be there for our clients, so we’re always in a win-win situation.”
