Erosion Control June 2012 : Page 20
Seeding New Directions Finding work outside the residential construction market BY CAROL BRZOZOWSKI J amie Jamison, owner of Brandywine Nurseries in Wilmington, DE, recalls a say-ing in his region: “When the market starts going over the cliff, we pray for either a very short cliff or a very long chain, because I can hear that chain clanging out and I look at the other end and it’s wrapped around my ankle.” It’s been either “sink or swim” in the wake of the downturn in residential housing construction for erosion control companies that once relied on that mar-ket. For those like Jamison, the downturn has been an indicator that it’s time to re-direct the company’s equipment and ef-forts into other market segments. There is work to be had in erosion control, but not so much in the single-family home sector, says Jamison, whose company provides erosion control as part of an overall suite of landscape services. “What we do now is modification enhancements around houses,” he says. “We still hydroseed around them or sod. Now you see townhouse developments being converted to apartments.” Jamison’s company has met each chal-lenge it has encountered since it first started in 1946. Beginning as a garden center, the company grew into landscape design and then into construction, which mushroomed in the 1970s. “We bought our first hydroseeding machine, a Finn Bantam 800, in 1976 and still have it,” Jamison says. That purchase was in response to outside con-struction firms coming into the region to build and requesting hydroseeding services that were being performed else-where in the United States. “When the housing boom started in the late 1970s, they were building like crazy every-where. Hydroseeding was the way to go,” says Jamison. “With that little 800-gallon machine, we could knock out a couple of houses a day easily.” The market has now shifted from single-family houses to multifamily housing, some of it marketed as adult communities in response to an aging US population. Providing services for roadwork proj-ects also continues to be a revenue stream for the company. While most of the road-work involves repair and maintenance, Jamison’s company is currently working on a large interchange project as well. Most contractors such as Jamison are noting that the primary “hot spot” for erosion control these days is in envi-ronmental work, especially remediation. Superfund sites have been a significant source of erosion control and seeding work for Jamison’s company, as has wet-land restoration. “We’ve been doing more environmen-tal work—repair work on secured land-fills and wetland work,” he says. That type of work has picked up in the area with the Chesapeake Bay Initiaitive, he notes. “We do the hydraulic seeding in wet-land restoration; sometimes it’s just a lot easier to pull hose out because you can’t get equipment on these areas,” Jamison 20 EROSION CONTROL WWW.EROSIONCONTROL.COM
Seeding New Directions
Carol Brzozowski
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