Davey Tree Flipbooks

93 92 Growth Rings Utility accounts in the South and Southeast were also successful. Employees such as Gene Efird, Tommy E. Davis, Dan Shellingburg, James Shephard, Earl Williams, Jimmy Robinson, and Alvin Cannon expanded Davey's presence in the utility marketplace and produced improved financial results by serving clients such as Duke Energy and other large investor-owned utilities and cooperatives. In a show of versatility, Davey had the unusual assignment of managing utility line clearance on an island in the middle of Lake Erie. Four days a week, six Davey employees boarded a ferry in Port Clinton, Ohio, in the summer of 1987 and traveled to the Island of South Bass where they managed line clearance for Ohio Edison. Maintaining electricity for the island, home to Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial, is important not only for the hundred or so permanent residents of the village of Put-in-Bay, but also for the thousands of tourists who visit each summer. Davey crews, managed by supervisor Les Shahan, started in early spring when the first ferry service resumed and finished by early fall when the ferry service shut down for the winter. In 1987, Davey had the chance to showcase its work on a literal stage. Blossom Music Center, an outdoor amphitheater tucked into the dense, deciduous forest of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, tasked Davey's Akron R/C office with revamping its sloping lawn. e venue features a massive, pyramid-like outdoor pavilion encircling the performance stage with seating for 5,700. But the venue's lawn, which has space for close to 14,000, suffered greatly from the thousands of people who tram- pled it during the multiple shows held each week. A combination of soil compaction, undesirable grass types and a poor maintenance plan made the lawn incapable of withstanding thousands of concertgoers. On rainy days, the lawn turned into a giant mud slide reminiscent of scenes at Woodstock. To improve Blossom's lawn, Davey aerated the soil to relieve compaction, top-dressed and leveled eroded areas and overseeded and seed-drilled with more wear-resistant, fine, tall fescue grass. Davey also set up a maintenance plan, with input from the Davey Institute, which included fertilization, weed control, overseeding, and aerification. e lawn renovations turned out beautifully. e lawn would hold up well as the venue went on to host huge crowds for musical legends such as Bob Dylan, Tina Turner, John Denver, Whitney Houston, Metallica, and the Cleveland Orchestra, which makes its summer home at Blossom. e expert care fostered a longtime relationship, and Blossom remained a Davey client through 2017. e work on the massive lawn at the Blossom amphitheater could be considered an early example of Davey's Groundskeeper Care program, which was officially introduced in 1988, although the Blossom work itself was an extension of Davey Lawnscape at the time. Management designed the Groundskeeper Care program, which targeted commercial customers, to provide commercial property managers and owners one source for all their landscape needs. By 1989 Davey had expanded the Groundskeeper Care program to more than a dozen offices, including the North Detroit R/C office. It was the impetus for Davey's Commercial Landscape Services division, which became a separate division seven years later. Davey acquired a small Ohio company in 1987 that provided an entry into the interior, commercial plant-scaping market. Plantasia, located just outside Columbus, offered interior plantscape, exterior landscape, and full-line floral services. e inte- rior plant services provided complete indoor designs that started with high-quality foliage, which were conditioned for six to eight weeks in Plantasia's greenhouse prior to placing the plants in a customer's interior environment. Davey continued to offer these services until 1995, when it sold the Plantasia business. In 1988, the Baltimore R/C office, under district manager Dick Warner, performed work on the Maryland governor's mansion in Annapolis. ey removed four trees – a red maple, two English oaks and a horse chestnut – during rather technical work involving a crane crew. e Decade Ends in Success As the 1980s were coming to a close the company started to rebound from the struggles it faced in the utility market in the mid-1980s. By 1989 Davey saw growth and relative stability in utility work, as emphasized by a new contract with Florida Power and Light that saw more than 80 new Davey crews start line clearing for the southeast utility. e burgeoning success of Davey Tree paid dividends to the employees. In May 1987, the board of directors had authorized a four-for-one stock split. Effective that year, all shareholders received three additional shares of stock for each share that they owned. A year later, the company opened the Employee Stock Purchase Plan to all non-bargaining unit employees over age 21. e move included one key change. Employees now only needed one year of service with the company before they could start buying stock. Chapter 5 A Davey utility crew at work around 1990. In the late 1980s Davey rolled out its Groundskeeper Care program, which offered a broader range of landscape care services such as mowing, edging, trimming, mulching, aerification and seeding. Pictured are attendees of a 1989 meeting with residential district managers to discuss the program, which marketed Davey as "America's Groundskeeper."

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