Contractor of the Year Finalist
CONTRACTOR OF THE YEAR FINALIST
by Tom Jackson
Jason Willard
Chattanooga, Tennessee
He started out with just a lawn mower. Subhead to a D6 thanks to good Now he’s up relationships, investments in his crews and a patient attitude.
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Bluestem Landscape and Design
Year started: 1998 Annual volume: $4 to $7 million Markets served: Excavation and clearing; residential/ light commercial construction; full service landscape design, installation and maintenance; wetlands creation and restoration.
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alking back to his car after his last exam in his last course in his last year of college, Jason Willard was just beginning to wonder what he was going to do with the environmental science degree he’d soon be awarded. But a chance meeting with a friend in the parking lot that evening turned into a job offer with a landscaping company, and that changed everything for Jason. Within two years, he had bought out his friend’s interest in the business and in 1998 launched Bluestem Landscape and Design. “Bluestem started with a few pieces of lawn equipment, tools, a trailer and some maintenance contracts,” Jason says. “I worked with two other men and we mowed three days a week and landscaped the other days.” A good start Jason grew up on a farm. His dad built and remodeled houses and Jason tagged along from an early age. A job as a teenager in a nursery cultivated an interest in plants and landscaping. By the time he got out of college he had the basic skills he needed. While landscaping helped launch the business, there’s a lot of construction behind it today. Early on Jason found success doing landscaping and irrigation systems for area homebuilders. But he often found that he had do to a lot of remedial work – bringing in fill and cutting down high spots – before landscaping started because the finish sitework was not appropriate for his landscape materials. And this typically happened at the point