Frank Mariani was looking forward to college and buying a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Sure, he had helped in his dad`s lawn service business during his years at Deerfield High School, but his father didn`t want him to go into that line of work.
Then Frank`s father was diagnosed as having leukemia.
”All of a sudden, I became the head of a household of five boys and my
(step) mom,” Mariani recalled. ”So instead of going to college, I learned the business. He became ill in 1972, the year I graduated from high school, and died three days after the season ended in 1973.”
Vito Mariani was 45; Frank was 18.
Today at 37, Frank Mariani surveys the world from a turret built on the front of what was a granite warehouse in Lake Bluff. From a glass-topped desk he oversees Mariani Landscape, a $5-million-a-year business that employs more than 100 people, including brothers John and Vito Jr., designing, building and maintaining residential landscapes throughout the North Shore. It`s a business built almost entirely on service: ”Whatever the customer wants,” Mariani said.
”We`ve worked harder in the last 18 months than we ever have” because of the economic downturn. ”But it has been beneficial,” Mariani said.
”We`ve grown since 1958 simply by picking up the phone, so when things got tight we didn`t know how to act.”
Many of Marianis` clients are chief executive officers of major corporations, and Frank said he enjoys sitting down with them for a cup of coffee to learn what is going on in the corporate world.
”One of my clients said to me, `Frank, you haven`t asked me for the order,` and it struck me,” Mariani said. ”I found we can go to the client and tell them what we can do for them, that their landscape only has a certain lifespan. Since we`ve asked for the order (rather than waiting for the order to come to them), our business has changed dramatically. Since we maintain our clients` landscapes as well as design them, we see the jobs on a consistent basis and know what has to be done.”
In addition to his own business, Mariani has been president of the Illinois Landscape Contractors Association, a trade group of more than 800 companies, mostly in the Chicago area. His term ended last month, when he was succeeded by W. Scott McAdam of Forest Park.
”Frank represents us well. He has a clear idea of what the association stands for, its goals and objectives,” said Patricia Cassady, ILCA executive director. ”He is very business-oriented and knows when to put the association ahead of everything else.”
Because he wasn`t able to attend college, Mariani gives the ILCA generous credit for teaching him his business. He sees his job within the industry as well as with his clients as ”to make people more aware of the proper ways to maintain a landscape in a cost-effective manner and be environmentally sensitive. In the ILCA, we have a wide variety of programs to make them better contractors.”
One of Mariani`s crusades is responsible use of pesticides. He sent a letter to all clients during the spring, telling them insecticides would be applied to their lawns only if needed, not as a routine part of maintenance that many companies follow.
He was part of a state delegation that went to Washington, D.C., to lobby congressional leaders to deal with a recent Supreme Court ruling that any local governing body could set its own regulations on pesticide use.
”We want to be regulated, we want stringent rules and requirements,” he said. ”In order to comply fully with them, we need one governing body that sets the rules for everyone, and that should be the state EPA, which could enforce them easily. We received an excellent reception.”
Part of Mariani`s crusade against blanket pesticide use is his belief that his father`s life was shortened by exposure to toxic substances. ”We were uninformed then,” he said. ”I worked for my grandfather in his orchard, and I remember mixing up products in a tank by sticking my arm in and stirring it.
”I assure you that ILCA members who attend our programs and receive an applicator`s license are not dipping their arms in the tanks and mixing pesticides. Can you guarantee that homeowners are not mixing these products by hand?
”If a chemical is applied properly, it is found to be safe by the EPA. The problem is unqualified, untrained people are using these products, and that`s why we need to get away from the mysteries of this. We should have licensed applicators running the show. On our staff, we have 18 crews, but only two or three people do all the spraying.”
Mariani extends that philosophy to the design phase of the business, headed by his brother, John. Plants that are native to northern Illinois are used when possible because they are hardier and more resistant to insect attack. Nursery stock is purchased from local sources so the trees and shrubs are acclimated to the winters and the clay soils. The firm has also purchased a site in southern Wisconsin where it will begin its own tree nursery to further control the quality of the plants it provides.
Mariani scoffs when he hears what builders allot for landscapes on new home construction. He said his firm prefers to work with the architect and builder from the start, but ”only a limited number of them will put up with the hassles we have on site.” Those include bringing in an arborist to come up with the best way to save as many of the trees as possible on the lot, cordoning off all native vegetation areas and having the builder remove all subsoil from the site or use it for berms and grade changes.
”The less the native soil is disturbed, the better the end product will be,” he said. ”I haven`t seen a builder yet who can replace a 100-year-old oak.” Compared with the relative pittance many contractors allow for landscaping, Mariani argues that 10 percent to 20 percent of the price of the house should go to landscape plantings while 7 percent to 15 percent should go to what he calls hardscaping-decks, walls and paths.
”We`re usually the last guy on the totem pole, but people have to understand you don`t have to do it all at once,” he said. ”As long as you do a master plan, you can install it in pieces, do it by priorities. I enjoy that because it guarantees a long-term relationship. We still have many clients that were my father`s. We`re very proud of that.”
Thomas and Maxine Hunter have had four houses landscaped by the Marianis- two of their own and two of family members. ”They just keep getting better, they`re very professional,” Thomas Hunter said.
His wife got so interested in landscaping that she took college courses to learn more. ”I worked at the old house and here with John Mariani,” she said. ”He has a wonderful eye for design and can be very original. Frank is definitely the mastermind, and John the designer; they complement each other. John is not just a cookie-cutter designer.”
John Mariani did go off to college, with his brother`s help, studying design at the University of Illinois. ”I had no desire to come into the business-I was studying interior design-but it just sort of happened,” said John, who shares his brother`s intense eyes and hairline. ”Frank and I work well together, we socialize together, our families just got back from a trip to Disney World.” John oversees a staff of six landscape architects and makes most of the sales presentations to potential clients.
John recalled that while growing up in Highwood, where many immigrant families lived, he, Frank and younger brother Vito slept in a triple-deck bed in a tiny bedroom. Their father, a farmer from Italy, had married Joanna Fiore and worked for his father-in-law, John, in his Lake Forest tree nursery. Then came a divorce, and Vito Sr. went into business for himself. The boys went with him.
”It was pretty traumatic. We were the only kids in school whose parents were divorced,” Frank recalled. Both parents remarried and had two additional children.
One of those stepbrothers on his father`s side, Robert Mariani, is an architect who designed the company`s headquarters building. Railroad cars carrying granite blocks were unloaded and moved along an overhead track to huge saws that would cut them into slabs. ”We wanted to retain the true feeling for the building,” Frank said of the eight months they spent designing the work area.
Basically, they blew out the front of the building and put on their two-story office complex, retaining the warehouse space for a shop for their equipment. There was enough room left over to lease the rest to the former owners, minus the railroad tracks, plus 22 acres to create a holding yard for nursery stock they purchase.
”I feel like I`m the conductor of an orchestra, that I have great people here, each with his or her own niche, whether it be the horticultural world or the business world,” Frank said. ”We try to have the best team to give the finest product available. We want to do whatever it takes to be on the cutting edge.”
Mariani wanted a nice working environment for his employees because they spend a lot of time on the job. When he does escape, he spends his time with wife Sherri, son Frank, 12, and daughter Alexandra, 9, at a spacious home in Lake Forest.
