Milton Bradley, See the Turkey

This turkey ran in front of me and into the brush, what perfect color and blending.

Last Thursday I took five of the crew and the Big John Deere and we began the installation near Addison, MI. Step one, tear out. My method probably does not differ much from other owners of a small landscape design/build firm. Basically I take the phone call, meet the customer, design and draw the job, quote the job, sell the job, order the materials for the job and get the crew started explaining what I want to my various foremen/women and installers. I generally paint out beds, flag walls and give any special instructions. When it comes to setting the plant material I usually do that personally as I tend to tweak and shift seeing the design morph as inspiration strikes me. I let my seasoned crews perform most of the installations which is a difficult thing for me since I still enjoy watching my designs come to life and working in the field.
The busted up concrete in the photo was a add on before we even started the job. Since I had designed a paver walk on the service door side of the garage our client decided it would look better to remove the existing concrete entrance walk and replace it with a paver walk to match the new one. When I designed the job I thought the same thing but it was not in the budget. I am happy our client made the decision, I am sure they will find it an elegant match to the refurbished, dark stained porch as well as providing design unity.

Saving the existing turf from the damage of tractor tires is paramount in many of our installations. We accomplish this with the use of drive on boards, 1/2" sheets of plywood, cut in half and laid as tracks for our equipment. One of my favorite employees used to refer to this as a Milton Bradley Day, playing the board games. His name was Rob and I often miss him , he was a good friend. We worked together renovating houses in the winter and landscaping in the summers. Rob worked for us for seven years and died from cancer at age 51, February 14, 2007.

Bill is in charge of this installation, he and Ryan will be on the job from start to finish. The board movers are Wes and Darrick. Gary is using a chain saw to ready a huge viburnum for the tractor to pull out. The dwarf Alberta spruce swinging on the end of the chain came out in a hurry, the soil here is dark and rich and the plants came out fairly easy.