Carving Out a Niche Market

From the manicured estates of Litchfield County to the rivers of Sun Valley, these alumni small business owners are embracing their interests and passions to develop products and services that make them stand out.

Ed Pequignot, Jr. ’09 was an outstanding athlete at Gunn, from the baseball field to the basketball court to the gridiron. He was also known for the cowboy boots he wore to class — which were eventually written into the school dress code by his teacher and coach, Ed Small. His grit, sense of style, and a desire “to be different than anybody else,” fueled his passion as a landscape designer and helped him to launch his company, “Garden Cowboy, LLC.”

Just over a year ago, Pequignot’s business became an overnight success, when he appeared as a contestant on the HGTV show, “Clipped,” with a panel of celebrity judges led by Martha Stewart. Pequignot was among the top topiary artists in the country vying for $50,000 and the title of Clipped Champion.

“I blew up right away with Martha Stewart and going on television,” Pequignot recalled in an interview this summer. In just two years, his company went from annual earnings of $25,000 to over $1 million. The list of private homes and estates he tends is so exclusive, he is not permitted to photograph some of them and had to sign nondisclosure agreements to protect the privacy of the owners.

One truck and a couple of clients

Pequignot’s decision to start a garden design business came down to being in the right place at the right time. From Gunn, he had attended the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, on a baseball scholarship, and planned to major in hospitality and tourism management. When an injury prevented him from playing, he returned home to the farm in Kent, Connecticut, where he grew up, and took a job on an assembly line at Hunt’s Country Furniture in Wingdale, New York.

“I was in the hardware store in Kent and the head estate manager at Oscar de la Renta’s asked me if I wanted a job,” said Pequignot, who accepted the offer to work as an apprentice to the master gardener at the fashion designer’s beautiful country estate in Kent, and other properties. “That was 12 years ago. I spent 10 years working side by side with him in England and in the United States on some of the biggest, most prominent gardens in the country and the world. I was fortunate to learn from one of the best to be one of the best. I didn’t know it at the time, though.”

Despite his upscale surroundings, he lived paycheck to paycheck, earning an hourly wage. “It was just a job for me,” he said. That changed two years ago, when his mentor retired. “I bought the business, which was one truck and a couple of clients for $23,000 that my parents re-mortgaged their house for, and which I paid back in three days. I knew once I got it going, I could do it,” he said.

On Television With Martha Stewart

He had no employees to start, and only the regular maintenance contracts he had acquired. Without a marketing budget, he started posting photos of his work on Instagram. Agents for “Clipped” reached out to him multiple times, and at first, he ignored them. But after two interviews via Skype, “to make sure they were legit,” he drove to Tarrytown, New York, to meet with the producers, and then joined his fellow competitors at Lyndhurst Mansion.

“I was gone for a month. It was in the heat of COVID. We were getting tested 24-7. Nobody got sick the whole time we were there, which was amazing. I never thought in a million years I’d be on television with Martha Stewart, and now I have a connection and a relationship with some of these people,” including his fellow competitors and world-renowned interior designer Bunny Williams, who has a home in Falls Village, Connecticut. “It was an opportunity that we would all say helped. It gives you a whole other level of credibility. It allows you, in an industry that’s very competitive, to have a little bit of a leg up on the competition, because you can say you were a Top 10 competitor in the country for the first season of ‘Clipped.’”

Pequignot stood out for other reasons, too, wearing his trademark cowboy hat and stilts. “I use chainsaws. These guys don’t use chainsaws,” he said, smiling.

Whether he is trimming a straight hedge or something more elaborate like a topiary carousel horse, he views his designs as art. “There is another aspect to this, which is skill and intelligence and creativity and art,” he said, recalling, “Even at Gunn, I took art classes. I loved art. I loved creating sculpture. So now I create living sculptures with plants.”

His Instagram @gardencowboy is brimming with gorgeous photographs of complex garden mazes, boxwood parterres, topiary displays and his signature cloud designs, which have as much to do with the interplay of light and shadow as photography, and give the impression that his meticulously hand-clipped boxwood orbs are floating.

Redefining Success

Around the time of his TV appearance, the demand for his services surged, and he hired his first four employees. Soon, he was traveling along the whole East Coast, from Maine to Florida, designing fullscale gardens from scratch, buying excavators and skid steers. Due to the pandemic, Kent had also become “super popular” with people who were moving there from New York City and buying up milliondollar properties with gardens. “I had eight trucks on the road. It was insanity.”

The business grew to eight full-time employees, but there was one problem. When his clients hired Garden Cowboy, LLC, they wanted to see Garden Cowboy. “When I tried to make the business bigger, nobody could successfully do it, or they wouldn’t take the risk. If you do fail, you’ll get fired pretty much,” Pequignot said, noting that boxwood is expensive, and the work is also unforgiving. “If you make one wrong cut, it’s gone forever. You can’t just stick it back on.”

In the past year, Pequignot realized that he was putting more into his work than he was getting out of it, so he scaled back and redefined for himself what it means to be successful. “I realized I don’t need to do that to be successful,” he said. “Now I have one truck and I have one guy who works with me.”

He still wears his trademark cowboy hat every day, just like his grandfather. “It’s always been my look. I never thought of it as being different. It keeps the bugs away and shields my face from the sun. I go into Warren General Store every morning, and if I don’t wear my hat, people will make comments.”

His hat inspired the name of his company, and in a sense, Pequignot is the brand. His work is specialized and unique. “How can I have that if I have six other guys working for me?” he asked. “I want to be the best. I want to work hard. I want to leave a legacy. I’m so excited to see what happens in 10 years. If these two years are any indication of where it can go, I think the sky’s the limit. I want to be able to cut hedges all over the world and have people say, ‘Those are Garden Cowboy’s hedges.’”

A Zen of Calmness

As of this summer, Pequignot was working for a limited number of super high-end clients, including the owners of private estates as well as the award-winning Ladew Topiary Gardens, which span 22 acres in Monkton, Maryland; and Naumkeag, a historic house and public garden in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, owned by The Trustees of Reservations. Another client in Millbrook has a maze that spans two acres with hedges six-and-a-half feet tall.

“I cut it all in four hours. It’s a massive job, but I’m the most competitive guy ever,” said Pequignot, who professed he loves a challenge. “I get on the stilts, I put on Mozart, and I just go to town. I go into this zen of calmness and I just become so involved in what I’m doing, and I love it so much. The next thing I know, I’m done. It’s so gratifying.”

With a more selective list of clients, Pequignot now has time to go to the gym, swim, run, and spend time at home with his wife, Angelica, and their two daughters, who are both under the age of 8. As the Bulletin was going to press, the couple was expecting their third child. He is clearly happy living in his hometown of Kent.

“I love our little house. We’ve got our five acres of land and our chickens,” he said. But at the end of the day, the only garden he maintains at home is for vegetables. “As funny as it sounds, I might be a million-dollar business owner but people still view me as just the gardener. I think I did pretty well with it. It’s not the most glamorous job in the world, but I’m so blessed to do what I love every day. I’m so lucky to be able to say that I built this brand. I was an apprentice for 10 years. A lot of people don’t want to do the longevity thing. You have to get good at stuff. All of that paid off.”