Happy Holidays to you...
Another year—and another landscape season—comes to a close! Ohio State is winning in football AND basketball this year, so all is peaceful in the John household. Molly and I have two children, our daughter is in college and our son is close behind her. Time sure flies quickly, as neither of our kids were even born when Molly and I started M.J. Design Associates, Inc.
I realize I often talk about the weather, but it has such a huge impact on our business and your landscape! Over the past couple of years, we have experienced (and had to manage) many weather extremes impacting landscapes—from record rainfall to a quick transition of drought conditions. Plants have certainly been effected and we will continue to see the side effects into 2020. But, as we close another decade, I want to reflect on our successes of 2019, as we've achieved a wide array of projects and milestones.
Some 2019 Highlights:
After 20 years, we are no longer doing work with the Wendy’s restaurants, but we've picked up some wonderful, new residential clients that allow us to focus on our specialty of ‘true gardeners’.
The past year brought many exciting landscape jobs, including: removing a pool to create a formal garden, putting in new patios and outdoor kitchens, and adding large boulders to create pathways across streams.
We've created and installed some new fire pit designs—as well as other outdoor sitting spaces and pond-less water features.
Molly has continued her passion of brightening your landscapes with dazzling seasonal enhancements displays.
We even helped put together a pumpkin house! (See photo below.)
We welcomed some new staff members who you've hopefully had a chance to meet—Michael Davie and Steff Stoll.
We also worked with Columbus State students, Larry and CC, who did internships with us this past summer.
While we still rely heavily on the H2B Visa program to fill our seasonal labor needs, we were able to plan much better because we had secured Green Cards late in 2018 for many of our seasonal staff. Molly even made two trips to Washington D.C. in 2019 to talk with our legislators about reforms to the H2B program.
Our inspirational M.J. Gardens continue to grow and mature. Our gardens are a great way to display many different plants that grow well in our area. Our surroundings also allow us to train our employees on proper pruning and care. Anyone is welcome to visit our grounds and walk around for inspiration and/or education.
Enjoy the gallery of photos below from 2019 projects completed, as well as some of the fun achievements we've had throughout the year.
We have been fortunate to have so many people help us along our business journey, and we are proud to have such great clients who we truly enjoy working with. Our team at M.J. enjoys coming to work each day, and creating WOW!
Thank you for another wonderful year! We wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and good health and happiness in the New Year.
See you next year,
Joel John