No Snow, No Problem for Wade Landscaping

When your business depends on steady snowfall for much of its seasonal earnings, you’d think an eerily warm winter stretch would risk hemorrhaging the bottom line.

But for Brian Wade, owner of Wade Landscaping, higher temperatures have only meant broader opportunities for his all-seasons service.

“This has been one of the busiest winters ever, by far,” says Brian Wade, who founded his Dover-based company in 2007, before adding with a chuckle, “and to be honest, it beats spending your days and nights plowing snow.”

Particularly, Wade and his crew have focused on brush and lot maintenance for homes and small businesses. Not only have these projects benefited other local companies such as Cornerstone Tree Care – who can transform scrap wood into mulch – they also allow outfits like Wade to get a head start on the comparatively gangbusters spring cleanup season.

“This will put us in a much better position to really go all out once spring rolls around,” explains Wade. “Having that head start will only mean more business in the future.”

But Wade’s work hasn’t been limited to brush, leaves, and other natural debris. They’ve even taken to helping clear litter from the lots of businesses like Panera Bread.

“They’re a very important client for us, so how their property looks is going to reflect on us,” says Wade. “So we’ve spent some time there picking up garbage and just trying to make it look nice for people passing by.”

Like most, Wade can’t recall having ever seen a winter – if you can call it that – quite like this one. Still, he says the unseasonable warmth has resulted in a little more balance for his always-busy team.

Perhaps most importantly, Wade has started emailing his regular clients and customers, inquiring whether he might be able to start his regular work a few weeks early.

“We’ve been busy, but we’ve also had a little downtime as well,” he points out. “It will be crazy before long, so it’s been nice to have that.”

With spring right around the corner, it won’t long before Wade starts rolling out the lawnmowers and weed-whackers, the mulch and the lawn plantings – all of which feature green products and methods squarely ahead of their industry’s curve.

Indeed Wade prides themselves on not using any chemically harmful fertilizers or mulch dyes – relying instead using totally organic hydroseeds – as well as extensively compost and recycle clippings and mulch.

Even their equipment uses 2-cycle fuel, which is non-toxic and harmless once it enters the ground. Additionally, Wade has in place an anti-idling policy that – along with running their entire fleet on Simply Green Biofuels – has helped significantly reduce the company’s carbon footprint.  

Like the aforementioned Cornerstone and Simply Green, Wade is a member of Green Alliance, a Portsmouth-based organization dedicated to helping raise the profile of sustainability-minded businesses throughout the region.

With the weird weather we in New England have been having, such efforts are, for Wade, more meaningful than ever.

“We’re always doing what we can to make sure we’re doing the right thing as far as the environment’s concerned,” he says. “If everyone chips in, maybe we’ll eventually get back to the snowy winters we all love and grew up with.”

 To learn more about Wade Landscaping, go to www.wadelandscaping.com

For more information on Green Alliance, visit www.greenalliance.biz