Plant health care, often abbreviated to PHC, is an opportunity for tree care contractors to differentiate themselves and to grow their businesses.
In fact, Mark Garvin, president of the Tree Care Industry Association (TCIA), called it “one of the strongest growth areas” in the tree care industry during a Vermeer podcast in 2015.
“It’s really the professional companies that are (offering plant health care), and there are pretty good profit margins in that,” Garvin said on the podcast. “And the demand is growing and growing.”
That growth is fueled by an improved economy in which people are spending more on maintaining and beautifying their property and the rising threat brought by invasive species like the emerald ash borer and the European gypsy moth.
Adding PHC can help a tree care company become a more well-rounded operation, according to Shawn Bernick, vice president and director of research and development for Rainbow Treecare Scientific Advancements, a Minnetonka, Minnesota-based company that develops, markets and distributes tree health care products for use by industry professionals. Other benefits he identified are the limited equipment needed for PHC work, the lower physical toll on workers compared with climbing trees or removing debris and the higher return per man-hour than other tree work.
“I have seen companies grow by tens of thousands of dollars from one year to the next after adding tree health care,” Bernick says.
Here are some tips by Bernick to add plant health care to your business.
Have a solid plan — Look at the major tree health problems in your area. Get up to speed on diagnostics, monitoring and management strategies. “Know the cause of a problem and be able to manage it through a ‘systems approach’ rather than just applying chemicals,” Bernick says.
Target a market — Within your customer base, identify who to target to help solve a particular problem. Set up a way to get your name out there as having a solution for the problem. “It starts with having a conversation with your customer about the value of trees,” says Bernick. “Once you explain the value trees provide — aesthetic, economic and environmental — the more likely the customer will be willing to invest in preserving trees rather than removing them.”
Manage the operations side — Make sure you have all licenses and tree care equipment required. If you are not going to manage this phase of the business yourself, have a person within your company who takes ownership, is knowledgeable about plant health care services and can apply products correctly (or is able to manage crews that do).
Big-picture approach — Bernick emphasizes taking a comprehensive approach to plant health care that focuses on both pest management and tree health. Oftentimes disease and insect problems may be the result of some other issue with the tree, site or environment.
One final reminder from Bernick: “If you look at this only as a profit center and you are not truly in it for the benefit of your customers, people will see through that quickly. That approach could make it difficult to compete in a credible way.”