Jon Davis was 13 when he and his twin brother, Don, started a landscaping business, mowing and tidying up the yards in their Morganton, NC neighborhood.
“My itch for landscaping started early,” he says.
Once they were 16 and could drive, they bought a trailer so they could expand beyond their neighborhood.
Some happy customers still live in his memories.
“One lady — I can still see her street in my head — would come out every week when we finished,” Davis recalls. “She’d come out and say, ‘Thank you. I’m proud that my yard is the best looking one in the neighborhood.’
“Our work gave her joy and happiness,” he says. He laughs. “She paid on time, too — I remember that.”
He and his brother sold their successful business to help pay for college, but by the end, Davis Lawn and Landscape had 20 commercial accounts and 60 residential accounts.
Davis went on to earn an associate’s degree at community college, then transferred to North Carolina State University to major in horticulture and minor in business and forestry. That landscaping itch stuck.
He joined Greenscape, Inc. six months out of college, starting as commercial maintenance foreman.
“You learn the science of your job when you get your degree,” Davis says, “but you learn how to apply it working at the job itself. You don’t really know proper pruning techniques until you’re pruning, out in the field.”
He was doing something right. After a year and a half, Davis was promoted to commercial account manager.
“You’re still getting your hands dirty, but you spend more time on logistics, scheduling, looking ahead 30 or 60 days so you can be ready for a project,” he says. “There’s more client interaction and communication, plus you’re doing enhancement sales.
“It’s like juggling 15 balls and keeping them all in the air,” he says. ”Once you can do that, you realize you handle the fires and emergencies much more smoothly.”
After four years at Greenscape, Davis left to work at The Brickman Group, which became BrightView.
“It’s a big company. I thought working there would expand my knowledge base,” he says.
It did. He spent 15 years there, first as production project director, then account manager, then senior account manager.
But after 15 years, he was restless.
“I was in a bit of a rut,” he says. “I had been doing the same thing for quite a long time.
“As companies get big they get more and more layers,” he says. “I found myself thinking, ‘Is this where I want to be 10 years from now?’”
One day, exploring LinkedIn, he saw a post from his longtime Greenscape pal, Leslie Herndon. They worked together back when he first started at Greenscape, when Herndon, now vice president of operations, was floriculture foreman. The friends had kept in touch over the years.
Greenscape was hiring a branch manager, she told him. Suddenly, Davis knew that’s where he wanted to be — back at Greenscape. He came back on board in March 2017, with new perspective after working at another company for years.
“I learned a lot from being away,” he says. “Many years working with a diverse group of people, I really learned how to mentor, how to make slight adjustments to maximize each person’s potential. If you don’t have respect for each other, you won’t have solutions.”
He laughs.
“I’m more calm now, too, after 15 years,” he notes.
This branch manager role suits him, he says. He loves leading and mentoring. He’s interested in the financial end of the business. He likes to look at the long term.
It feels good to be back home at Greenscape, Davis says, where his co-workers feel like family, and the owners look out not just for the bottom line, but for the health and happiness of the Green Team.
“First and foremost, they’re all about the customer experience and a quality product,” he says, “and that’s important to me.”
So are his roots. Those long days toiling side by side with his twin brother at Davis Lawn and Landscape grounded him.
“Early on, I learned to give my best performance every day,” Davis says. “I learned to be cordial and professional, and to do everything right the first time.”
At the end of the day, he shakes his crew members’ hands and thanks them. That grateful customer from his teen years is still in his head. She taught him the value of feeling appreciated.
“It makes you feel really good to know that what you do every day affects other people’s lives,” Davis says. “Some people might say, ‘It’s just landscaping.’ But we’re impacting people’s lives. Whether they’re walking outside their office and appreciating the nice landscaping, or enjoying a park, or walking around their nice-looking HOA community. We improve their lives, every day.”