NEW YORK – The prestigious Park Avenue neighborhood has a small business to thank for bringing vacation cheer to its streets yr after yr.
City-Scape Landscaping, a family-run operation based mostly in Queens, installs 120 fir bushes shipped from Nova Scotia, Canada, alongside the avenue for nearly 50 blocks, from forty ninth to 97th streets.
The business has maintained the avenue’s grassy medians – often called the Park Avenue Malls – for 50 years. A crew of six to seven City-Scape staff positions the fir bushes. The firm brings in additional than $1 million in annual gross sales from all its shoppers, based on Experian Business Data. The fir tree course of accounts for near $100,000 of {that a} yr.
Park Avenue has been a key a part of the corporate’s business since 1972, City-Scape’s homeowners mentioned, serving to pay salaries and hold households fed.
City-Scape Landscaping began when late proprietor Vincent Sofield’s older brothers, Joe and Duke Sofield, have been employed by their neighbor Peter Van de Wetering — “the unequalled tulip impresario of Park Avenue” — to assist his crew plant and keep the department stores, Vincent mentioned.
Christmas tress put in by City-Scape Landscaping on Park Avenue in New York.
CNBC
Shortly thereafter, Van de Wetering moved to Long Island to start out Van de Wetering Greenhouses, which continues to maintain the avenue lush with tulips and seasonal flora. He handed off mall upkeep completely to the Sofields, and City-Scape was in business.
“I don’t think Park Avenue would have quite the same glamour if the median walls weren’t in place,” mentioned Vincent Sofield’s son, Dylan. “I think it really creates a good contrast with the concrete jungle — kind of softens your eyes up a little bit, makes it less aggressive.”
A half-century later, City-Scape is conserving the business within the household. After turning into a co-owner earlier this yr, 26-year-old Dylan is taking on the operation within the wake of his father’s current passing.
“A lot of people don’t believe me when I tell them I own the company,” he advised CNBC earlier this yr. “They ask for the boss, and I say, ‘You’re looking at him.’ But they quickly lose that once they realize I know what I am talking about.”
Sofield mentioned he has performed a job within the business since he was younger, not as a result of he needed to, however as a result of he “always wanted to be involved.”
“I was probably pulling a rake before I could walk,” he joked.
Despite the avenue’s excessive profile, Sofield mentioned he has felt unphased by it as a result of it’s “all he knew” rising up. But as he has gotten older, he now acknowledges that Park Avenue isn’t just any landscaping job.
“It’s definitely something to be proud of,” Sofield mentioned. “I see my work all over the place, TV, Instagram. I will be scrolling and think, ‘Oh, there’s my tulips,’ or ‘There’s my lawn.'”
Dylan Sofield, proprietor of City-Scape Landscaping.
CNBC
For many of the yr, City-Scape tends to the department stores each Monday forward of excessive visitors weekdays. Crews weed, mow the lawns and hedges, take away particles, water the vegetation and restore broken wooden limitations.
The firm is employed by the Fund for Park Avenue — the neighborhood nonprofit liable for the department stores — to keep up the inexperienced areas year-round.
The malls change by the season: tulips within the spring, begonias in the summertime, chrysanthemums within the fall and non permanent fir bushes within the winter.
“It’s people’s front yard, front gardens along Park Avenue,” mentioned the group’s president, Barbara McLaughlin. “So everyone who’s lucky enough to live on Park Avenue really enjoys it every day, but also, it’s a wonderful place to walk and it’s enjoyed by a lot of people.”
The bushes are lit up on the annual Park Avenue tree lighting at Brick Presbyterian Church, an occasion that drew 4,000 folks this yr, a church spokesperson mentioned.
Christmas tress put in by City-Scape Landscaping on Park Avenue in New York.
CNBC
“It’s such an intimate event for New York City,” McLaughlin mentioned. “It’s a neighborhood event, neighborhood feel, but all are welcome.”
The bushes will probably be taken down in mid-January.
“We’d love to have them stay longer, but they’re not planted,” McLaughlin mentioned. “These trees are installed temporarily, so they do get dry.”
And because the bushes mark the altering of seasons, additionally they mark a season of change for City-Scape. It was Dylan Sofield’s first vacation tree set up operating the business with out his father.
“I still have the help of my family,” he mentioned. “My uncle is still around, and he’s been doing this for 50 years; he’s not going anywhere.”