Grahame Hubbard | The Urban Landscaper - A Success Story!

“I don’t think people realize how personal gardens can be. When you talk about gardening, it doesn’t matter how famous or who you are, gardens are a great equalizer (…) Whatever it is, it’s something that has come from their memory, which they’re passionate about. And that’s what I love the most about this job, because it’s about passion, you know? And at the end of the day, if you can’t live your life with passion, then why are you living your life.”

~ Grahame Hubbard

The article below is reproduced with permission from Engel & Völkers - The Gavriani-Falcone Team - The original article can be viewed here on their website

Paul & Vince, (of Engel & Völkers) spoke with Plant Specialists’ owner, Grahame Hubbard. Grahame, originally from a remote fishing town in Australia, moved through New Zealand and Canada before settling in NYC, where he acquired Plant Specialists to build both a business and a family. The company now maintains over 750 rooftop gardens, with services ranging from custom irrigation and carpentry to lighting and holiday installations. Known for his passion for plants and community, Grahame has helped transform the city’s concrete skyline into vibrant green spaces.

Paul & Vince: How did you come to be in New York and in your current profession?

Grahame: I come from a town of sixty people. We lived on a fishing boat in the Gulf of Carpentaria in Australia. All of my schooling was done by two-way radio – in the Outback in Australia it was called School of the Air. Each day you get about an hour and a half a day with a dedicated teacher and you’re given all this homework to do. And, of course, as a child my options were fishing, swimming and shooting, or doing homework. So, needless to say, I didn’t do extremely great at school. But I did work at a neighbor’s greenhouse when I was 11 or 12, and he would pay me in the most magnificent orchids, and I’d bring them home to my parents. So I was involved with plants early on.

I moved to New Zealand when I was 21 and I worked with some friends there and I eventually started working for a group of travel agencies which brought me to Canada. We had over 440 staff with sales over a hundred million. And then I decided that I really want to have kids, and that was more possible in America with surrogacy at the cutting edge. So with no education, in order to come to this country legally, I needed to buy a business that employed at least 60 Americans, which is why I bought Plant Specialists. It was a great opportunity where the owners wanted to move on, and they had this massive, three-quarters of a city block building in Long Island City, covered in green ivy. It’s absolutely spectacular.

Paul & Vince: Yes, we’ve seen it, it’s amazing.

Grahame: Yeah, it’s a pretty cool place to be, and for a boy from a tiny town in the Outback, it’s amazing to see all the film shoots we do here, we have celebrities coming through all the time…Every day is exciting for me.

Paul & Vince: Was it difficult or intimidating to come from Canada and have a landscaping business in such a large city?

Grahame: No, not really. I knew that it would do well here because of the immense wealth in this city, and the logistics. If we were in a small town people would just go get what they need and plant it. Whereas here, it’s a little more difficult… You’re dealing with buildings that don’t allow things to go up the main elevators, you’re dealing with certificates of insurance, you’re dealing with rooftops. So, the city has its own challenges.

I think out of the 750 gardens that we have, we don’t mow one single lawn. Actually, we mow one lawn, but we mow with scissors. We clip it with scissors because it’s got to be exactly right. And, you know, when you think about it, you can’t really have a mower on a
rooftop because we can’t have things flying over the edge.

Paul & Vince: That’s true. Are there other things that you do that would surprise people?

Grahame: So we do irrigation, we also construct, we have a full carpentry team here, lighting, you name it. For a typical townhouse, we do window boxes, the roof, the backyard, pergola, blue stone, fencing, we’ll do all that sort of thing. Anything you can imagine on the outside of the building that has to do with the garden. And we have to keep things to a certain height on the roof, because once it gets too high, it’ll blow over in the wind! We have all sorts of tricks to keep things stable and not too heavy on roof terraces. And we also do indoor and holiday decorations, so we’re busy year round.

Paul & Vince: Can you tell us more about what a typical day on the job is like for you?

Grahame: My day starts very early, because our trucks of plants and supplies really need to be on the road by 8 o’clock. So I get up about a quarter to five, I guess, and roll out of bed, quickly make lunch for my kids, and then I rush off to work. I’m here by 5:30, and then it’s just manic. We have 12 trucks. There’s people coming and going. There’s scheduled appointments going on. There’s clients changing their mind. It carries on until nine o’clock, then everyone’s gone, then I’m here tidying up, straightening everything back up. Our support staff is minute. So I’m one of those support staff. I’m loading or unloading trucks, ordering…You know, people are always laughing at me because I’ve got a different pair of glasses on all the time, but it’s because I break them almost every day.

Paul & Vince: That is very funny. Do you meet with clients?

Grahame: I do on some occasions, but I have really good people who work with me. And we have so many extremely famous clients and celebrities, and I got in trouble once when I asked one of them what they did for a living.

Paul & Vince: Ha ha!

Grahame: Yes, it’s true. So I have really good people. My philosophy in business is you surround yourself with people who are far better at what they do than you are. And that’s what I have. I have a really, really exceptional team who are exceptional at what they do.

Paul & Vince: Can you tell us something that most people would find surprising about your work?

Grahame: I don’t think people realize how personal gardens can be. When you talk about gardening, it doesn’t matter how famous or who you are, gardens are a great equalizer. People become very passionate, perhaps about a childhood memory they have. Maybe it’s the smell or the shape of something, whether it be the blossoms of an apple tree, or a woodland meadow, or a Japanese rock garden. Whatever it is, it’s something that has come from their memory, which they’re passionate about. And that’s what I love the most about this job, because it’s about passion, you know? And at the end of the day, if you can’t live your life with passion, then why are you living your life? You’ve got to find your passion. So, I really like that. I like creating something that’s coming out of someone’s memory, right out of their head.

Paul & Vince: Wow, amazing. It’s really thoughtful work, what you do.

Grahame: It is, and we also donate a great deal of material. We used to do a lot with Rikers Island in the rehabilitation area, donating orchids and things like that. Because often we have to replace plants where maybe one flower has gone, but it’s still spectacular. So we donate to lots of different places, like Materials for the Arts, which I’m on the board of. And every plant that’s in Socrates Sculpture Park we’ve donated. We used to run a works initiative program there to train unemployed people how to garden. So we do a lot of community-based things and my staff love it, too. I have 70 staff and the average length of time that they’ve been in the company is 17 years.

Paul & Vince: That’s really impressive.

Grahame: Thank you, but I really think that my staff enjoys their work, because they feel like it can make a difference. They feel that in an urban jungle like New York, this work can make a difference, whether it be a small green patch or whether it be a vegetable garden, or whether it be just something a little greener. I think that’s a good thing.

Paul & Vince: Can you tell us about a couple of your favorite things to do if you have a day off in the city and out with your kids?

Grahame: Well, you know, I’m addicted to my kids, of course, as you can tell. And I think they’re sophisticated children, because of growing up in a city, so, you know, anything you can throw in front of them, they’re wanting to try, which is kind of awesome. My youngest is really into dance, and my oldest is very much into art. So we often go to different dance events, we go to The Joyce a lot, in Chelsea, we all love Pilobolus, so we go to their shows. And my youngest loves art, so we love going to museums. And they’re really into Lana del Rey and Billie Eilish, so we tend to follow what they’re doing and try to get to as many of those concerts as possible.

Paul & Vince: And do you live near work, in Long Island City?

Grahame: No, I used to live there, but now I have a house in Fort Greene, and I love it. At one point during the pandemic, we wound up with four truckloads of custom grown daffodil bulbs, and we couldn’t sell them. So every day, a truckload would show up at my house and I’d leave them out for neighbors to take. And every year since then, my kids and I give out more bulbs. And now when you drive down my street in spring, it is spectacular. Thousands and thousands of these daffodils are flowering and it’s just beautiful. So you know, out of something as bad as COVID, something really beautiful came out of that as well. It really brought our block together in interesting ways.

Paul & Vince: That’s amazing. We will have to come visit you next Spring!

Grahame: Please do!

…and one more, Just For Fun

Paul & Vince: Now we have a just for fun question. If you took a year long trip to space, and could only bring along three things, what would they be?

Grahame: Well, I would bring my kids, obviously, that’s two, and then we’d probably need an iPad or something…Because I was thinking, these devices might get a bad wrap, but for someone who comes from living on a fishing boat in the Outback, you know, knowledge is a privilege. Oh! And Orchids, we’d bring orchids into space, for sure. They would be perfect peace offerings to any beings we met out there.

Paul & Vince: Plants as intergalactic peace offerings! Genius. And if your kids came with you, what kind of space suits would they have? Something cool?

Grahame: Oh yes, they’re very trendy little kids They’re big into thrifting and using recycled things which I love. But yes their astronaut suits would likely be very trendy, inspired by thrifting and tracksuits and hoodies, I guess.

Paul & Vince: Maybe a fashion line is in your future!

Grahame: Ha, ha! The future is bright, that’s for sure.

Original artwork by Jolisa Robinson, Gavriani-Falcone Team Marketing