TALENT, PASSION, and being service oriented are the tenets on which Omar Squires says businesses should be built.
Those same principles have been used daily since 2004 by the 35 year-old owner
of Lawns & Landscapes (L&L) to build his Christ Church business.
While he and his staff have been maintaining the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus’ 19 acres of property as well their Lazaretto, Black Rock, St Michael complex for the past six years, as well as several private residences around the island, Squires told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY that he started as an apprentice with a similar business.
This was to enable him to earn some money while studying economics and accounting at the Cave Hill Campus. He branched out on his own before going to Florida to do his Master’s in business administration.
Initially, he said, the job was “just cutting grass”, but over time he grew to love it and it was after returning to Barbados that he played “with the idea of going into” landscaping, he “didn’t really want to”.
“What really changed my mind is, I was driving home, there was a house that I was approaching that I observed was very unkempt.
I threw it out to God and said, ‘If it is that You really want me to get back into this sort of business, I’m going to stop and ask this man if he would like service and if he says yes, I’m going to take it seriously.’
“When I went to ask the gentleman if he would like the yard cleaned up, he not only said yes but wanted to know what took me so long to come because the grass was so high for so long and he would like me to come right now if I could,” Squires recalled, laughing.
Since opening, the businessman has added another aspect which he says is blooming.
“I started the online nursery three years ago to reduce the expenses that I incurred as a landscape developer.
“I realised that I didn’t want to be limited by a geographical location and I also wanted to embrace technology to better serve my customers, because I realised that some of them did not have the mobility needed to get to various plant nurseries and some of them just didn’t have the time.
“In doing this, I realised I fulfilled a need of a big bracket of the society,” he said.
Squires explained that people viewed the plants and garden supplies on the company’s website, placed the orders and paid when they were delivered within 24 hours.
“We would like to see ourselves as the provider of all tropical plants available on the island. We grow some of them ourselves although there is a need to import because we’re not limited to a species that originates in the Caribbean. We also make available species that are available in other tropical regions like the Amazon forest, et cetera,” he noted.
The entrepreneur’s intention is also to show people how they can merge herbs and vegetables into landscape plants so they can have flowers, tomatoes, and carrots and feed themselves. (Green Bananas Media)
