Member Profile Greenhaven Landscapes, Inc

Greenhaven Landscapes, Inc.

2012 Horizon Court Zion, Il 60099 (847) 872-9700 www.mygreenhaven.com

by Meta Levin It’s a match made in landscape heaven. David Hoxsie was working for Mariani Landscape, where Jennifer, the woman who would become his wife, was an intern. They met outside the apartment complex where both were living.

This all was before Jennifer finished her degree in horticulture and landscape design at the University of Illinois (the perfect blend of her interests in science and art, she says) and David, who has an associates degree in horticulture from the State University of New York in Cobleskill, started Greenhaven Landscapes, Inc.

Together they have built Greenhaven Landscapes from a small maintenance firm, to a design/build and maintenance company that employs 24 people during the season, with about six full time employees.

Maintenance Crew Leader Placido Nava started at Greenhaven 15 years ago. “He watches the details as much as we do,” says Hoxsie. “The quality of his work is consistent.”

Celebrating his 10th year with the company is Crew Leader Jose Chavez. “He loves doing the higher end work,” says Hoxsie. “He’s such a hustler; always moving. He wants to do a good job and takes ownership of the work.”

Hoxsie wrote his business plan in 2003, while working for Scott Byron & Co., Inc. He incorporated Greenhaven in July and went on his own in September of that year. All that fall, he sold business and did pruning. Alone. The next spring, he had enough work to hire five people and get two trucks. By the spring of 2005, he needed his wife’s skills, knowledge and help and it was getting increasingly difficult to run the business out of their home.

That’s when the couple decided to invest in a larger facility, forming Hoxsie Enterprises to purchase two acres in Zion, IL, with a 5,000 square foot building, including an office.

They established a business model that requires any clients hiring them to do design/build to also sign on for maintenance work. “We are investing in long term relationships,” he says. It also ensures that the work is kept up in the way that was intended. “We are quality driven.”

Their customers live up and down the North Shore from Wadsworth to Wilmette, and west into Lincolnshire, Long Grove and Libertyville. Ninety-nine percent of their work is high end. “We will do everything from large estates to small courtyards, if they are willing to spend the money and let us maintain it.”

In the last year, the Hoxsies have seen more people who want to spend more money outdoors. “Especially with COVID, people want to focus on the outside,” says Jennifer Hoxsie. They are, the couple has noticed, going more and more to outdoor entertaining, especially smokeless fire pits to extend the season.

For relaxation, Hoxsie is heavily involved in the landscape design for the couple’s home, which they often use to try new plants. They have a vegetable garden, in which both of them work, and Jennifer loves to cook with what they grow there. Their 13-year-old daughter has inherited her mother’s artistic tendencies, focusing on sewing and fashion design, as well as reading, but the five-year-old daughter loves to be outside and regularly walks the garden with her parents.

Hoxsie’s interest in horticulture and landscapes grew out of the time he spent regularly visiting his grandparents’ 20-acre farm in Connecticut when he was growing up. “It was beautiful and the joy of my childhood,” he says. Hoxsie helped his grandmother in her vegetable garden, as well as with the produce stand she ran out of her garage. In fact, the farm’s location on Greenhaven Road was the genesis for the name of their business.

Greenhaven Landscapes became ILCA members in 2004. Hoxsie believed that by taking advantage of what the association has to offer, it would help him run his business professionally. Jennifer Hoxsie had an ILCA scholarship when in college. By 2011, they entered their first ILCA competition, winning a gold in maintenance for a heritage project. They have since earned more awards. ˝Their clients have noticed. “They send us Christmas cards,” says Jennifer Hoxsie.