Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep# 9: Designing Dreamscapes: Rich Cording Sr.'s Legacy in Landscape Architecture
Join us for an engaging conversation with Rich Cording Sr., the mastermind behind CLC Landscape Design, as he shares his incredible journey from a college student mowing lawns to spearheading an award-winning landscape architecture firm. Discover how Rich, with a background as a licensed school teacher, transitioned into landscaping to support his family, and how his firm has thrived over the past 50 years by offering clients a seamless project management experience. We discuss the evolution of the landscaping industry from the 1970s to present day, and Rich unveils the intricacies of CLC's comprehensive approach that combines top-notch design with direct specialist hiring, ensuring both cost-effectiveness and high-quality results.
Explore the growing trend of custom outdoor retreats with us, where Rich highlights the allure of elaborate outdoor spaces equipped with kitchens, TVs, and fire elements. Learn about the importance of starting projects with a solid landscape design and the benefits of choosing deer-resistant plants to maintain both aesthetics and functionality. Rich shares how his son contributes significantly to the company with his expertise in landscape design and plant selection, further enhancing their brand's focus. We also touch on the core values that drive CLC's exceptional service. This episode is a testament to CLC's unwavering commitment to excellence and innovation in landscaping.
CLC Landscape Design
Rich Cording Sr.
58 Ringwood Ave
Ringwood, NJ 07456
(973) 839-6026
Office@CLCdesign.com
clcdesign.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Doug Drohan.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, Welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbors Podcast. I'm your host, Doug Drohan, the owner of the B&M Media Group, and I am pleased to welcome the talented owner of CLC Landscape Design, Rich Cording Sr. Rich, welcome to the show. Welcome, Thank you for having me so Rich. You're not related to a Tom Cording by any chance, are you? He's?
Speaker 3:my cousin, he's your cousin. Yeah, I do his landscaping also.
Speaker 2:All right. So Tom and I used to work together at Sony Music when he was the VP of publicity for Legacy Recordings. I was the international marketing director that helped market Legacy Recordings internationally and Tom invited me. I remember he and I had lunch with Taj Mahal once. He said hey, doug, we're having lunch with Taj Mahal, you want to join us Absolutely. So that's really funny.
Speaker 3:All right, well if you talk to the world. Yeah, yeah, unfortunately, ever since he left sony, I don't get any more free music I used to get, oh I know cds from oh, not only the cds, it was the uh, the concert tickets.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great shows he went to. But you know the music industry's changed quite a bit, so, um, so, so you guys. So CLC, you're not your. You know what some people might think of as landscape. You know landscaper, you know somebody who cuts my lawn. You guys are actually an award winning landscape architecture and construction firm and you've been around a few years, is that correct?
Speaker 3:Yes, I'm currently over 50 years in business and you are correct, we don't cut lawns. We're not a typical landscaper like that. We're a landscape design build firm.
Speaker 2:Nice, nice. So what does that mean? So if somebody they're looking to redo their backyard or install a patio or do you know one of these great outdoor kind of living spaces you see nowadays outdoor kitchens, is that the types of projects you guys do?
Speaker 3:That is correct. Yeah, typically people reach out to us who are looking for a landscape design. I'm a licensed landscape architect. I employ eight full-time landscape architects that work with me to develop the master plan. That master plan is kind of the key to everything. You know, whether it's a simple patio or whether it's a, you know, a swimming pool, we do a ton of swimming pool work. Oh, you do, okay, and you know most people who well, I shouldn't say that A lot of people that gravitate to us are usually going to do very complicated projects, meaning it's going to have the pavilion, a TV set, heaters, it's going to involve electricians, plumbers, carpenters, audio specialists, and we have a great team of people that we recommend that I've developed over the 50 years I've been in business so we can put people in touch with different contractors to do the specialties.
Speaker 3:Our specialty is first starting with a landscape design and then, during the project, we coordinate with all those people. So the client is only dealing with a single point of contact, which is usually my son, rich, or one of my project managers.
Speaker 2:Got it, so I don't need to hire the electrician or all the other, the plumbers and things like that.
Speaker 3:Sometimes well, usually the electrician and plumber and any of the other contractors we do have the homeowner hire them directly. We coordinate with them, but we found it's more cost effective to have them hire them directly because this way I don't have to mark anything up. I started that after the 08 recession, where I still going to use the same people I would use, but instead of adding a percentage on top of it for having it in my contract.
Speaker 3:the people get the beauty of both worlds. They get to deal with great people that I would have hired anyway at a less expensive price. And then they also get us to project manage everything so that the trenches are being dug at the right time, the inspections are being dug. We handle all of that. We get certainly all the permitting and all of that put in place.
Speaker 2:So you guys have been around since the 70ies. How did? How did you get into this business?
Speaker 3:Well, I started cutting lawns when I was in college. I was. I was working for someone else right after high school and then during college in 73, I started my own business and I was going to Rutgers, but I was going to be a school teacher and I'm actually a licensed school teacher for elementary and special ed, and I did teach in the nineties for a while.
Speaker 2:Okay, where did you teach? Cause my in-laws were teachers.
Speaker 3:I taught in Lakeland high school for two years and in Ryerson middle school, both in Ringwood, where you know I had, you know, for 40 years I lived there, right, right. So yeah, I just was cuttings. And then I got married right out of college and I realized that she was a teacher. I was a teacher and neither one of us was going to make a lot of money and we wanted to have a house and have kids, right. I said well, maybe I'll keep this landscaping business for one more year and then a year, 50 years later, here it is.
Speaker 2:Right, right and obviously. Well, you know, when I was growing up in the seventies nobody had landscapers. You know you cut your own lawn. My brother and I would cut our neighbor's lawns, or we didn't have leaf blowers, you know we'd break their leaves for them and make a couple of bucks. But obviously it's changed quite a bit over the years and I think during COVID that's when a lot of my neighbors started getting pools, when the town pools and other vacations were kind of canceled that year. What have you seen from the outside? Looking in, it seems like the custom outdoor retreats have grown in popularity the kitchens, the TVs, the heaters, things like that. When did you see that trend and how often do trends tend to come and go? Do you?
Speaker 3:do you find Well, certainly over the last 10 years there's been a much stronger push to kind of bringing the home outside. We call it. You know where the outdoor kitchens have become more elaborate. Tv sets have become more popular. My first 40 years in business, rarely was there a TV set outside. That was just not something that was in people's consciousness.
Speaker 3:But now I would say you know half of our larger projects all have outdoor TVs and outdoor fire element. You know, sometimes a swimming pool, certainly. You know they have a lot of hot tubs and water features. So you know, when you start putting all those elements together, you know. That's why it's essential and why we always start with the landscape design, because it's just. You know well, first of all you got to find out from the town what you can and can't do. Everything is there's so many ordinances now. But yes, the trends have come and gone. Have fire elements always been pretty popular? Yes, outdoor kitchens have been popular, but not to the degree they are now. I mean we have clients doing $100,000 outdoor kitchens. You know, sometimes it's just I even cringe saying do you really want to spend that money?
Speaker 1:on an outdoor kitchen.
Speaker 3:You know, let's, let's give half of it away to charity and you can do a $50,000 kitchen or use it at it at somewhere else in your yard. Yeah, um, but sometimes you know people entertain large groups, or or one.
Speaker 2:I have one, or I have two, two people who are professional chefs, chefs like that, I understand okay yeah, yeah different yeah, but you know, I I have to say like I said to my wife, my um, we have a swing set in the back and I said you know, my son doesn't really use it much anymore. I was like I don't have to turn this into a you know pergola and outdoor tv. And she's like, oh, I don't want aiden having one more place to watch tv. Yeah, and um, and. But the one thing about outdoor tvs is how do you deal with the elements? How do you deal with rain and snow? And well, two things.
Speaker 3:One they do make outdoor tv sets that can take the weather, but they're like eight, eight, ten thousand a piece. They're not inexpensive. Yeah, most of my clients now are putting them either underneath a pavilion or on the wall of the house underneath a pergola. That's rain proof, got it. And they're just using regular tvs for 600 bucks and they, okay, they look at it. Hey, if it breaks, if I, if I forget to cover it in the winter, or something I can go buy 10 more before I have to get, and they're much more high definition.
Speaker 3:So that's been the most popular thing that people are doing out. It is using good outdoor TV sets.
Speaker 2:That's it, right. Sure, yeah, if you're a little outdoor, you know movie night, that's great. The other thing I you know movie night, that's great. The other thing I noticed that you guys seem to be pretty specialized in is plantings. Right, I think I know one of my.
Speaker 2:I moved into my house in Harrington Park eight years ago. I tried to do everything myself, but the biggest thing is keeping up with deer resistant plants because they seem to eat everything nowadays. But I think the biggest value add I see, aside from you know the beautiful builds you do is just having the right plantings, like knowing which plants grow a certain way throughout the years, which you know bloom earlier in the season, later in the season, so you always have color how fits in with your, your patio design. I mean that I'd imagine that's one of the things you guys are, um, experts in, I guess. Is that part of your uh, I see it's part of your services, but is that something that, uh, you know? Looking at your, your portfolio, when you see a really well, a pool is one thing, but then to see the ornamental plantings around it, the grasses and the colors, that's what's really eye-catching, I think.
Speaker 3:It is.
Speaker 3:And you know I've been very blessed to have two sons working with me. My son, eric, runs sales. You know I run the whole company and clients have my phone number from before they hire me to years later and I just make sure everybody does their job. But you know, probably the biggest addition to my company was my son, rich. 20 years ago he got out of the Navy. He was a Navy officer. He's a brilliant, a brilliant young man and of course you know, as most sons, older sons, say to their fathers Dad, I can do everything better than you, so let me, let me run the company which I eventually let him do, and he was great at it.
Speaker 3:But he also, you know, being someone you know who was trained to kind of, you know, save people's lives, so to speak, and make sure that he's he's running these. You know he was on John McCain destroyer for years and you know so. There's just a different level to attention that he brought to my business. That has been phenomenal, and one of them was he said, dad, I want our brand to be beauty. And you know, he made, he taught himself to be a professional photographer, he taught himself how to write code and redid my website. You know, nicer than I had it. But then the biggest thing he did is he went back to Columbia University and he got his master's degree in landscape design. He sat at the feet of some of the best landscape architects in our country and he wrote his master thesis on deer resistant plants and he's become quite the expert in deer resistant plants. In fact, other landscape contractors, other competitors, they'll reach out to us and ask questions and share stuff with us. So, uh, yeah, deer resistant plantings have been a thing for years now and it's only getting worse. Um, there's very, very few places I work in that don't have a deer problem, and he has three different levels of deer resistant plants. They're all deer resistant, but there's deer resistant plants in an area where the deer may occasionally be around. They don't graze heavy. Then there's another level and then he has what we call the iron clad deer resistant plant list where, even if you live like smoke rising kin along, where they're just herds of deer that live in your backyard, he has lists of plants and, believe it or not, they are unbelievably attractive because we use, like you said, grasses. We use this one grass called Hacony grass and Carex that are that are colorful. Hacony grass comes in a golden green color. It's beautiful, you know, spring summer, even into the fall, and the deer won't touch it. Beautiful, uh, you know, spring summer, and even into the fall, and the deer won't touch it. Uh, carex, ice dance is white and green year round. It's an evergreen and again, the deer don't touch it.
Speaker 3:So he brought us into this kind of new universe of deer resistant plants. That, um, you know that he considers he won't use a plant unless it's um deer resistant, of course, in deer resistant areas. But more importantly, he considers he calls them rock stars, meaning I don't want to use a plant that's not a rock star, meaning it's got to have multi-seasonal interest. It's got to be hardy. You know nobody wants. You know we don't want to be replacing plants, even though we guarantee them and the clients don't want to be bothered with the nuisance of it. So he'll always look at these different factors meaning are they hardy? Have they proven himself in our area? Do they have multi-seasonal interest, meaning more than one season, and that's critical to him. So we've developed this plant palette, which we usually give to our clients during their design process, that they can look at all these different plants that are available from perennials which are still in the hundreds of deer resistant perennial you know, meaning they bloom, they get flowers and then they die down.
Speaker 3:I mean something like there are certain types of viruses we use, like variegated iris. You would think. Oh well, iris is going to get eaten. Well, it's not. The flowers may occasionally get eaten, but that's OK, because that's not why we're planting it. We're planting it because it's a beautiful variegated white and green stem. That's there all, all season, and usually, you know, um, you know that's to us that's more than enough to have that multi-seasonal interest of the, of the variegated stems I know I gotta use the word interest because it's, you know, for me, like a lot of deer, resistant plants weren't interesting.
Speaker 2:You know, they didn't have much color, you just felt it's just going to be green or different shades of green. So it's good to know that some of these grasses are. You know, they add color to your backyard and it's not just something that, uh, you know, and there's also lots of you know, like evergreens, like a dwarf spruce we use a lot of dwarf blue spruce.
Speaker 3:We use a lot of gold thread cypress we use a lot of, you know, golden junipers. So there's ways to get plants that are deer resistant, very strong deer resistant plants, that they have needles that are colorful. Now you're not getting, you're getting multi-season interest because they're there for, you know, all four seasons.
Speaker 3:But, they're not changing. So we use a combination of those kind of plants, plus we use those grasses I mentioned, plus we use you know, you know flowers like peonies and stuff like that. That's a dear old touch and that still give you some seasonal blast of color, you know. So it's it, so it's a real art. It's, yes, it's a science, but there's also an art to it, and I think what's changed for our company and why people look at our website and get so excited about dealing with us? They follow us on Instagram. I mean, we have people from Instagram that are like raving fans that never hire us, but I met somebody in a gas station. Once he comes up to me, you rich cording of clc, I go yes, no way he goes I follow you on instagram.
Speaker 3:It's it's really. I get so mad. I love. I said, well, are you gonna ever call me? He goes. No, no, I don't need your services, I just love following you on instagram that's great, but he felt an urge at 10 o'clock at night to say something to me through my window, so uh, and that, that's all my son, that's all. My son, rich, has developed this great plant palette and his creativity being you know, having a master's in landscape design, he does. He's responsible for almost all our plantings.
Speaker 2:And I'm looking at your Instagram right now and there's something with a coleus plant. Well, that's an annual. That's an annual.
Speaker 3:So that's something we do. Use a lot of them. Yes, that was a real. We did on coleus. It's one of our favorites. For less seasonal interest, we do what's called fine gardening. So after we design, after we go through pre-construction which is a nightmare nowadays getting all the permits and then we go through construction and people write all these wonderful reviews. They're almost always about our construction department.
Speaker 3:Our team of people who build stuff is just phenomenal. They're meticulous. They've all got between 20 and 40 years. I got many employees with over 40 years of experience. They all work under the umbrella of my son, rich, who makes sure and has set such impeccable standards of the way we do things and they all have to be trained and follow it. Even if they came from another company and they already had 20 years experience. They have to do things the way my son has set them out.
Speaker 3:For example, we do things uniquely different with pavers than any other company. We use a different base, we use more of a base. We use a different type of bedding material so that it drains, so your polymer sand that you put in your joints doesn't crack. He has done so much to bring about the details in in getting a great project built that has just kind of changed everything for us in terms of being able to give you know five-year guarantees that your pavers won't settle and that you won't have problems with the jointing material. And these are just things that most homeowners listen into. This you know they're not aware of these things, that we are that go on.
Speaker 3:But I'm just so proud that Rich and other members of our team have worked together over the years to pull together these standard practices that I think exceed industry standards and really set us apart from most companies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's amazing. So would you say like I mean misconceptions, or do you think there's any misconceptions about landscape? You know firms or landscape design or any? I don't want to say myths, but maybe just misconceptions, because one of the things I notice in my neighborhood is that everybody has a different landscape truck outside their house every week. Now, whether these guys are actually landscape designers or landscape architects.
Speaker 3:That's a whole different universe. That's not the universe. I'm in. There's very few people who are in our you know, upper high end residential design build that we are. We don't cut lawns. People who cut lawns are not our competitors. No one is going to hire their lawn cutter and compare him to what we do. You know we're building projects. That yeah. Do we build projects for ten thousand dollars and do front plantings? Yes, and we love it. But and that's just to let everybody know, call us, no matter what, it's a project.
Speaker 2:That was my next question.
Speaker 3:Well, I cried myself on that. You know, I was brought to tears one day. I saw this review that you know my my, you know, one of the people on my team sent me and I read about it, and so I called my son, eric, cause it was raving about him, and I said you know, eric, you know what job was this? I'm not remembering it because I'm aware of all my jobs. He goes oh, dad, it was real small, it was an older woman, it was only a couple thousand dollars, so you probably didn't, you know, go through. And I said and he goes, I did what you taught me, dad. I treated her like she was spending a million, it didn't matter.
Speaker 3:And every salesman in my company is trained that way, every project manager is trained that way. Every client is treated the same way, no matter what they're spending, and that's something that again, has made me extremely proud. And I think the myth is that, or the misconception is that all landscapers are the same, and they're not. You know, we're not a landscaper, we're a licensed landscape architectural company that also installs the work we design, and that is just. It's just a different realm than than the people cutting lawns.
Speaker 3:And I think the other myth is is that somehow you know we're not professionals. When I started, that was the biggest obstacle. That you know well. You know like people used to say well what do you do?
Speaker 2:You know, is this your?
Speaker 3:real job Is this. What do you do in the winters? You know well I work 12 months a year. I'm just as busy as in the winter as I am in the spring, because that's when we're designing and selling, and it's a super high-end professional business. What we do, I mean we're dealing with architects, engineers, we're dealing with town engineers, we're interfacing with clients and six, seven contractors on a particular job to get it built. To me it's a very high-end professional service that we offer.
Speaker 2:I was going to ask you if there was one thing you wish our listeners knew about your company, but I think you kind of just answered it right there.
Speaker 3:Well, I would say, and to build on that a little bit, I think the biggest thing to know about our company is that we love what we do, just absolutely love what we do and every person, the values that we have. We have five core values. You know which is service? Which is we're here to help people. So, every meeting that I have with my salespeople, my project managers, christmas time, I go through my five core principles, and the first one is service. And service I define as we're here to help people. We're not here to sell jobs, we're not here to build stuff, we're here to help people. Now, of course, to help people, you have to have knowledge. That's my second core value. You've got to have knowledge.
Speaker 3:So all my head people are sent to classes. We train them ourselves, but many of them attend Rutgers constantly. We train them ourselves, but they, you know, many of them attend Rutgers constantly, you know. And then Synergy it's not about one person, you know. So we, every design we do, is reviewed by myself, my son and there's also a group review. So every as we're designing, we have a Slack channel for every single client. Other architects can can view other architects designs, ask each other questions, get feedback say, hey, well, why did you do this? You know, blah, blah, blah. And I think we get to come up with better design ideas because we have a synthesis of ideas in it and I think because we're a family company and that family values attitude permeates into every single thing we do. I mean, isn't? I mean you'll read reviews where just people love you know, usually not me, it's usually my two kids.
Speaker 3:I'm not in the field anymore.
Speaker 1:You know what I?
Speaker 3:mean I work via zoom, I do presentations, I'm the person trying to help the client get over that finish line. So they're working with an architect and I'm a licensed landscape architect. The other licensed landscape architect has great ideas but maybe doesn't have the construction experience I have or doesn't have the pricing knowledge that I have. So my job is to try to help that client get to a place where they're happy with the budget, in love with the design and then to manage their expectations as we move through what I call pre-construction. Um, and that's that's been my biggest pain point. To be honest, doug, is this pre-construction phase now? Ever since covid, I used to get permits in a month. Now it takes me six months to get a permit, and it's just that you got to get engineers, and now and again they're all there to protect the people. I get it.
Speaker 3:And and because of stormwater management laws that have been passed by the state of New Jersey, almost every town now requires for a certain amount of impervious coverage, meaning you add a couple of hundred square feet to your existing patio we have to do a stormwater management plan to show the town that that water is going to be dealt with correctly, meaning it stays on site, it doesn't go into the storm sewers and it doesn't go to the neighbor's property, and that is important. I mean for a lot of reasons. You know, I just came back from Washington DC, a national convention, and that was one of the things we were studying was sustainability and biodiversity and how do we bring that into residential designs, biodiversity, and how do we bring that into residential designs. And that's, you know, becoming one of my more. One of my passions now is is how do we bring these grander ideals into individual residential backyards without making it one ugly meaning?
Speaker 3:You know, I was one of the first rain garden certified rain garden installers by rutgers, years ago in fact they just they always recommend me to people who are looking for rain gardens in North Jersey, but they were ugly. They just you know they were not done nicely from an aesthetic point of view. We've kind of brought that, we've changed that. We can now do a rain garden that looks gorgeous and that has plants that are attractive year round. So it's all these kinds of things I think that, you know, make me very, very proud of the team that we have at CLC.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned five core values service, knowledge, synergy. What were the other two?
Speaker 3:Honesty. Honesty, I mean one of the things. When I first started in business, I felt like I always had to fib to a client oh, I can't make it because it rained. No, just tell the client the truth line. Oh, I can't make it because it rained. No, just tell the client the truth, you know. Whatever it is, you made a mistake. Hey, you know.
Speaker 3:My guys, I don't even hear of the mistakes, to be honest with you, because they deal with it If there's a mistake made. For example, we nicked the corner of a garage once. That was a very tight access. Well, I didn't even find out until I saw a bill go through my system that I said what is this for? And they said, oh well, we nicked the corner, we took care of it, we called the place, we got it fixed and it was done within days. The client had no aggravation.
Speaker 3:Everybody in my company is empowered. And then the last core value is the golden rule. I want every one of my clients treated how you would treat yourself, how you would treat your own mother, and to me that means communication. You know what I mean. When I was on the other side and having contractors work at my house, the thing that I resented the most was when I wasn't being communicated with. So, like I said earlier, every single client has my phone number. They have my son, rich's phone number. If they call my office, they get a human being. They never get a voice recording unless it's after hours. They don't have to do seven prompts.
Speaker 3:Someone picks up the phone and that person is very knowledgeable. My office manager, donna, has been with me over 30 years and she usually answers it. If not, her sister Diane answers it, and if not, marcia answers it, and every one of them I've heard the same thing. Oh, I love your office manager. Oh I love that, because they know too that one, you pick up the phone and two, you're there to help people. So they'll direct people to whatever it is. And if they're not sure, a client sometimes calls up and says I'm buying a house, can you come out and look at it? I don't own it yet. They say well, I'm not really sure. Here's Rich, the owner's phone number. Call him. And I can't tell you how many people say this to me. I didn't really think it was true.
Speaker 2:They gave me your number and you actually picked up the phone.
Speaker 3:So, but I think that comes with having those core values that we want to. We want to treat people how we want to be treated. We love what we do and we're here to help people and I think that that energy and again, when people meet, it doesn't matter who they meet in my company, whether it's someone who's oh Ricardo, he's phenomenal, he always smiling, he does this, he does that. He helped me carry in my groceries. You know, that's, that's something that you have to embed in your, in your, in your company. It has to be a value that is. You know, I will not tolerate anything but that. But, to be honest, that's what's made these people stay with me. They love the fact that they know we care. They love the fact that they are empowered to do things on the job. No one calls me up and says, hey, can I exchange a Haconi grass for a Carex? No one asks me that.
Speaker 3:They are empowered to make that decision with the homeowner, and they've been trained to make the best decision. That's great. So how? How can people, uh, find you? So the best thing is go to my website, clcdesigncom. And my website, um, has tons and tons of photos of work we've done on. It is a lookbook which shows you know. I'm very proud that last year for the New Jersey Landscape Contractors and the New Jersey Nursery Landscape Association, we did win nine awards, which, to my knowledge, no company has ever won nine awards before for their work. So that would be the best thing to get a good sampling.
Speaker 3:Certainly, like you looked up Instagram, follow us on Instagram. We're very active, we post five days a week and we're always trying to post new stuff. We're very active, we post five days a week and we're always trying to post new stuff. We're doing a lot of reels. So follow us on Instagram and go to my website and then, once you're on my office, on my website, you contact the office. They'll schedule you an appointment with either my son, eric, or one of our salespeople. They'll also give you my phone number and you can call me directly to ask any questions you have.
Speaker 2:That's great. Well, this is great, rich, I really appreciate your time. It's been great learning more about what CLC does, and just bear with me for 20 seconds, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the good neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNP Bergen. com. That's gnpbergen. com, or call 201-298-8325.