The Edge July/August 2025

î COVER STORY

HOW LANDSCAPE PROS ARE INCREASING THEIR EFFICIENCY Trailblazers:

By Jill Odom

PEOPLE REMEMBER THE TRAILBLAZERS. THE ONES WHO WERE BRAVE ENOUGH TO GO out on a limb and try something no one else was quite confident in yet. Implementing artificial intelligence in meaningful ways is one of those unknowns that only a minority of landscape companies are currently exploring.

development to marketing and admin support, now has at least a splash of AI included. “There’s been a lot more things that have come out that have gotten way better at the design side,” Hartshorn says. “On the admin side, I really feel like AI, in general, does good job at keeping that in the forefront and being very versatile with that as well.”

In a survey conducted by Aspire, over 1,000 landscape companies reported they believe artificial intelligence will make the biggest difference in field operations, smart routing and scheduling. Despite this attitude, only 17 percent of companies said they are currently leveraging AI. “I don’t think people understand you can train it and actually store information in there to be used throughout whatever you prompt it,” says Joseph Watruba, founder and CEO of LDI Landscape, based in Kathleen, Georgia. “That’s what got me interested in it. It’s been a windfall after that.” Chelsea Hartshorn, co-founder of Threadleaf Landscape Design, based in Lehi, Utah, has gone all in on AI. She says everything, from design

INTERNAL PRODUCTIVITY GAINS One of the main benefits of AI is speed.

“If I’m going from A to C, I get to B faster,” says Samuel Rankin, founder and president of ETCH Outdoor Living, based in Huxley, Iowa. “I think that’s huge. The faster that I can get up to where I can have maybe a rough draft deliverable, the better. Certainly, it still takes time to deliver

Photo: ETCH Outdoor Living

22 The Edge // July/August 2025