Ewing Irrigation grew to 200 branches and a fourth generation of family leadership
A Phoenix supplier of irrigation parts, stone and fertilizer to landscape professionals reached its centennial as a family-owned company with branches from coast to coast.
Phoenix, AZ
In 1982, Hunter Industries was a startup that had just launched its first product. That year its founder, Ed Hunter, and Ray York, who led a growing landscape and irrigation company called Ewing, decided to join forces. When Hunter Industries looked back on the moment in 2023, it called it the start of a business relationship and a friendship that spanned decades.
The occasion for looking back was Ewing’s 100th anniversary. By then Ewing Irrigation & Landscape Supply was a national distributor headquartered in Phoenix. It is a supplier, not an installer. Landscape contractors, sports field crews and golf course staff come to its counters for irrigation parts, turf products, stone and help with hard questions.
Ewing is family-owned, and the York family has led it across generations. Ray York ran the company in 1982. Douglas W. York was its president and CEO by 2017. In 2018, Douglas York shared the news that a fourth generation of family leadership had joined the business. Ewing has described itself as the largest family-owned supplier of irrigation and landscape products in the country.
What makes the company worth a close look is the way it grew. Ewing added stores by the hundreds and bought specialty suppliers in Florida and Arizona, keeping their staff and their product lines. Through all of it, the work stayed the same: a contractor walks in needing something for a job, and someone at the counter helps find it.
The name on the sign goes back to King Ewing. A 2022 sponsor profile in the newsletter of the East Bay chapter of the California Landscape Contractors Association credited him with founding the company in 1965. It also described him as one of the early pioneers of irrigation distribution.
The dates do not line up neatly. A centennial in 2023 reaches back decades before 1965, so the company counts a longer history than the one that starts with King Ewing.
Ewing’s ties to the contractors it serves are old ones. The East Bay chapter lists Ewing Irrigation among its members of more than 30 years, with a join date of 1973. Ewing also sponsors the chapter. That puts the company’s name in the monthly newsletter and at chapter events, next to the landscape contractors who make up the membership.
The catalog has grown well past sprinkler heads. The 2022 chapter newsletter listed irrigation supplies, water-efficient and sustainable products, landscape and turf products, agronomics and growing supplies, hardscape and outdoor living materials, landscape lighting, water features and erosion control. In a 2023 sponsored listing in Landscape Management, Ewing sorted its offerings into turf and ornamentals care, hardscapes, irrigation, outdoor living, outdoor lighting, and landscape tools and supplies.
Its customers are professionals. The newsletter named landscape contractors along with people who work on sports fields, on golf courses and in growing operations. Much of the service is built for crews with little time to spare. Ewing offers express will-call pickup for contractors in a hurry. It also offers job tracking and quoting, online ordering and accounting, and mobile apps for landscape calculations. Contractors can earn year-end rebates and EARN program discounts, and they can join early order programs.
Ewing also teaches. It runs CEU-approved classes for contractors and their crews, with courses on irrigation design and efficiency and on auditing systems.
The newsletter profile spent a paragraph on the counter itself. It described staff who walk alongside a customer to find a product. When they don’t know an answer, they go and find it, and they treat the question as a chance to learn something new about the industry.
Much of Ewing’s growth came through acquisitions. In two deals a year apart, the company took on a specialist and kept what made it useful.
In 2017, Ewing merged with Upstart Products, based in Titusville, Fla. Upstart had served Florida’s golf industry for more than 20 years with sustainable fertilizers, soil amendments and plant nutrients. Ewing already had golf customers, and Upstart brought an agronomic line built for them. Upstart’s customers, in turn, gained access to Ewing’s full range of irrigation, landscape and specialty products, along with open warehouse shopping, deliveries and online services. Ewing said it would invest in upgrades to Upstart’s 8,000-square-foot headquarters.
“Upstart, and its unique golf agronomic product range, provides a complementary offering to Ewing’s golf customers,” Douglas York said in a 2017 announcement reported by Landscape Management.
The next year, Ewing did something similar in Phoenix, this time with stone. Ewing Hardscape Supply bought All Star Materials, a supplier of natural landscaping materials that had served the Phoenix market since 1982. That was the same year Ray York and Ed Hunter decided to work together. The purchase added three retail locations. All Star became Ewing Hardscape Supply right away and kept its staff of 22.
Those yards handle the heavy side of landscaping. Ewing Hardscape Supply sold contractors and homeowners decorative rock, boulders and riprap, flagstone, river rock, sand, topsoil, soil mixes and mulch. It also carried pavers, travertine, wall blocks, building material, lighting, grills, fire pits and artificial grass. Ewing already ran 14 Ewing Irrigation & Landscape Supply stores across the Phoenix valley, so the new yards filled in a market the company knew well.
“Expanding Ewing Hardscape Supply provides more convenient locations for our customers,” Dave Sawyers, the division’s general manager, told Landscape Management in 2018.
By then Ewing had more than 200 stores across the country. The 2022 chapter newsletter put the figure at 200 branches from coast to coast.
When Ewing reached its centennial in 2023, Hunter Industries marked the occasion by going back to the beginning of the partnership. Its post said nothing about store counts or product lines. It described a growing irrigation company, a startup with one product, and the two men who decided in 1982 to join forces.