A small landscaping company that's stayed small on purpose.

Brenda Evans grew up off Eastern Parkway in Schenectady, the kind of neighborhood where everyone knew whose lawn was whose. She spent eight summers working for a much larger landscaping outfit before going out on her own in the spring of 2014. Her pitch to her first seven clients was simple: "I'll do the same work, I'll answer the phone myself, and I'll charge less than what you're paying now."

Twelve seasons later that's still the pitch. The crew is bigger — six full-time staff and two seasonal hires — but Brenda still walks every new property herself, still writes every estimate, and still picks up the phone before it rings four times.

We've grown by referrals. We've stayed small because the second a landscaping company gets too big, the people who started it stop touching grass. That's not a trade-off we're interested in making.