When Chris finds something wrong partway through a job, he fixes it. Usually the bill is his.
“More times than not, out of our own pocket, just so that way we know it’s done right,” he says. “And we don’t really cover up any issues while we’re working.”
Chris is the sole owner of Fisher Landscape Contractors, based in Aston, Pennsylvania. His crew works across Delaware and Chester counties, in towns such as Media, Glen Mills and Swarthmore. There are no partners and no layer of staff between him and the client. “As of right now, you’re dealing with me and not four different salesmen, office people and this, that and the other thing,” he says.
The company still mows lawns on weekly schedules, and most of its work is for repeat clients. Chris has been steering it toward landscape construction, meaning larger jobs built to a higher standard rather than quick, budget-friendly ones. The company builds patios, walkways and retaining walls and takes on grading and drainage. One homeowner hired the crew to set a Belgian block wall around garden beds and to seed ground where trees had been taken out.
He holds the schedule to the same line he holds the work. He says the company has never failed to finish a job it agreed to do, and that in all his time running it he has missed one or two phone calls. “You gotta be, or else you’re going to fail,” he says. He is wary of grading himself, though. “I’d consider us really reliable, but also that’s straight from the horse’s mouth.”
The crew is small: a few full-time employees and some part-timers. Asked how the standard carries from him to them, Chris gives a short answer. “I think it’s just leading by example.”
The work is residential for now. Chris would rather be doing commercial jobs, and he knows the way in isn’t posted anywhere. He describes how to get a foot in that door as a closely guarded secret. His read on what it will take is just as brief. “I think it’s just a time thing.”
On paper, the company is only a few years old. Chris says he started cutting lawns in fourth grade, kept at it through high school, and has done nothing else since. The lawns have turned into patios and walls.
“I’ve been doing it my whole life,” he says. “I don’t really know anything different.”