The Edge July/August 2025

THE AGRONOMIST

The Agronomist: A Walk Down Memory Lane: Lessons Learned By Listening to Clients

IF YOU’VE BEEN IN THIS BUSINESS LONG ENOUGH, YOU accumulate a lot of stories, some funny, some not, while others leave an indelible impression on you. Here are a couple of mine from the same neighborhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

could understand, something that I will be eternally grateful for him doing. Now, what I am about to tell you happened before we had pre ventive grub control products, so you had to carefully inspect each lawn in August and September to make sure you didn’t have an infestation. One particular year, I completely blew it. I showed up for the October treatment, and the lawn was completely dead. I had completely let down this kind man who helped me so much when I needed him. Crestfallen, I knocked on the door to admit my sin and take my medicine. I was expecting the usual yelling and screaming that I got from other customers when things went wrong, but I should have known better with the good doctor. Once again, we sat down on his garden bench at the edge of his very dead lawn. What he told me then was more valuable than what I learned from all of my horticulture professors. He explained that what we are dealing with here is living tissue. He cautioned me never to lose sight of the fact that as much as we think we are in control of what happens to this living tissue, we are most assuredly not. We should always do our best, of course, but eventually, this living tissue will die, as it must. Not that I didn’t know all of this before, but he put it to me as he must have explained it to his medical students who deal with death on a daily basis and need to orient themselves with what must be done in a clear-headed way. Being a tiny lawn, it didn’t take long to scarify the old dead tissue away and reseed it for him. It was the very least I could do; he did so much more for me than I ever did for him. TE

screen, I immediately recognized her – she was Bruce Mann’s wife – Elizabeth Warren. Contrary to her firebrand persona on TV, she’s very nice in person and invited me to a meet & greet at the Capitol when I was there for Renewal & Remem brance. The second customer, well… He wasn’t a customer since I wasn’t able to close the sale, was Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. He graduated from Harvard Law School and taught there as well as at the Kennedy School of Government. As opposed to Sena tor Warren, Justice Breyer was very much the same in person as he was in public – very soft-spoken and right to the point. I spent a couple of hours talking lawn care with him on his patio, where he was reading briefs of the cases the court was hearing. I would have loved to get to know him better. The best I’ve saved for last, although you’ve doubtless never heard of Dr. Gregory Rochlin. If you close your eyes and imagine a kindly old college professor, round and bespectacled, that was Dr. Rochlin. He taught child psychia try at Harvard Medical School and had what must have been the world’s tiniest lawn, a true postage stamp. My interactions with him were much like that of Bruce Mann in that it took me two minutes to do the lawn, but I would be there talking for an hour or more. When my oldest daughter was diagnosed with a serious illness as an infant, I asked Dr. Rochlin about it. He sat me down on his garden bench and explained everything to me in a way a non-doctor

If you are aware of the kind of lawn care work that I did when I owned my own company, you’re probably thinking that Cambridge is a strange place to find me. I specialized in really big properties like sports fields, golf courses, parks, cemeteries, and stuff like that. Lawns in Cambridge are about the size of a roll of sod, so what gives? The first customer I’ll mention is a gentleman by the name of Bruce Mann (no relation to me, as far as I know). As was my routine, I would always ring the doorbell when I arrived at his house, and we would launch into long con versations about anything and ev erything. I’ll bet that none of those conversations were less than half an hour in length. Bruce explained that he was a professor at Harvard, which was just at the end of his street, and that he spent most of his time researching the Middle Ages. Apparently, I was a welcome respite in contrast to hanging out a thousand years ago. Once we finished talking, I would treat his lawn, which never took me more than five minutes as it was as tiny as can be. Occasionally, his wife would come out, say hello, and drag him off somewhere. Where am I going with this? Well, Senator Ted Kennedy had just died, and it was time to elect a new senator to represent Massa chusetts. Some of the obligatory candidates floated to the surface, but all of a sudden, and complete ly out of nowhere, the Democrat Party nominated a law school professor from Harvard University. When this new candidate’s face was flashed across the television

By Bob Mann Senior Director of Regulatory and Technical Affairs

8 The Edge // July/August 2025