Meet the Team

As President of Morton's Landscape Development Company it is my duty to see the "big picture" and to surround myself with the right people to keep us moving forward. I try to instill the same work ethic in my people that has gotten myself and Morton's to where we are today. Having been a carpenter by day building bridges, a sheetmetal worker by night, and laying concrete on weekends I learned early the struggles of supporting a family and getting ahead. To pick up some extra income I started mowing lawns throughout Northeast Ohio. Though a side job, I soon realized I had a small business blossoming. A short time later I had crews out mowing on their own while I expanded and started to build decks and sculpting landscapes. It was at this time when I had to make a decision to go full bore into landscaping or return to construction. With the help of my son Morton's has grown steadily throughout the years. Today we run four divisions, Lawn Maintenance, Erosion, Air-O-Mulch, and Landscape Construction. We have a full time Landscape Architect and sales team. All of this made possible by perseverance and having the right people with the same vision, drive, and work ethic that I maintain to this day.

From the age of nine I have been a part of the business. By the age of fourteen I started looking to make this a career and began taking classes through the Ohio Landscapers Association to further hone my skills and gain more perspective about the business side of things. With nearly a lifetime of study that came from working with my father in the family business I worked my way up from the field and to becoming a $1 million-plus salesman every year. Today I look at where we began and what we've become but what really keeps me going is where we can be 10 years from now. Though the business continues to grow one thing I've always instilled in our people is that serving the client isn't just about taking on new jobs, going out and completing them. It's about being a partner with them and sharing with them in the process.

I had just graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in meteorology and returned to the Cleveland area. I was working for a major airline at the time with the plan to be a flight dispatcher. This would have been my dream job, that would of combined my love of meteorology and love of flight. At the time I was dating my wife to be Ellen. The economy took a down turn for the airline industry and with it went my plan. Unless I was willing to relocate, I needed a new plan that would keep me in Cleveland area for obvious reasons. Thus a new plan, I set out on my own and started a landscape business. I soon realized that to succeed I needed to be more than just a landscaper. Shortly after marrying Ellen we moved to Columbus so I could attend The Ohio State University to study Landscape Architecture. I have been a registered Landscape Architect in the state of Ohio now for 15 years and have more than 25 years of Landscape Design and Construction experience. Through the years I have had the opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects. These include Master Planning, Streetscapes, Subdivision Entranceways, Signage, Walking trails, Commercial and Residential design. I have worked for Forest City Land Group, Vocon Architecture, HSB Architecture and RDL Architecture. I have studied and have a working knowledge of green roofs and walls. I’ve learned through the years that there is more to design then just creating something based on what I want it to be. There are constraints that come with what I do whether monetary, client’s ideas/desires or whatever it may be. That doesn’t mean the design can’t turn out great! It just means I need to listen and understand my clients. I love what I do! When they say things happen for a reason, believe me they do.

Oh and as for Ellen and I, we’ve been married almost 25 years and have three wonderful kids. She’s the one that made it all possible.

Within my years of service I have served as a project manager, business owner, superintendent as well as an estimator. My position with Morton's Landscape Development Company as the Vice President of Operations and Business Development has given me the opportunity to use the full array of my diverse skill set. Over the past 20 plus years I've had the opportunity to explore the green industry from top to bottom. The beginnings of this path are rooted in the golf industry which is where I chose my career path working at a private country club in Northeast Ohio. This led me to enrolling in the Turfgrass Management program at The Ohio State University. Post college my wife, a landscape design and construction major, and I purchased a landscape company. Feeling the pressure of business ownership we decided to move on, and back to my desire for something bigger. In September of 2005 I went to work for one of the largest golf course development company's in the world. We moved to Arizona to work in the company's southwest region gaining and broadening my experience in construction. This opened up a whole world of opportunities building and renovating both golf courses and sports fields as well as gaining new insight into the turf maintenance and grow-in associated with these projects. I further honed my skills and applied them to new and renovated irrigation installation systems. After extensive traveling and being away from my family we returned to Ohio and back to the landscape industry. Having gained a wealth of knowledge across the industry one thing rang true wherever I went, never see opportunity as working for or with a company or individual, but partnering with them. This is at its core the recipe for success and something we try to instill in our people and our projects.