Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep. # 76 Behind the Scenes of Landscape Design: From Idea to Reality
Transforming outdoor spaces requires not just skill, but an artist's touch and a technician's knowledge. In our latest episode, join landscape designer Joe Antine as he unpacks the intricacies of his 52-year journey in the landscaping industry. From his humble beginnings in lawn maintenance to crafting exquisite gardens with functional aesthetics, Joe shares valuable insights on the art of order and beauty in outdoor environments.
Throughout our discussion, Joe outlines the technical elements that sustain beautiful landscapes, including the critical role of drainage in maintaining health and functionality. As many homeowners face challenges with wet yards or ineffective drainage, Joe elaborates on how proper grading can prevent these issues while enhancing the property’s visual appeal. His perspective on integrating natural materials and creating harmonious designs reveals how landscaping elevates the overall look of a home, allowing us to express ourselves through nature.
Discover how Joe revolutionizes outdoor spaces by utilizing curves and thoughtful layouts, making them not just functional but visually inviting. He highlights the growing trend of outdoor living spaces, from kitchens to lounges, accommodating those who wish to have resort-like amenities right at home. Let Joe’s passion and expertise inspire your next home improvement project! Don’t forget to subscribe, share with friends, and leave a review if you enjoyed our conversation!
Joe Antine Landscape Design Contractor
Joe Antine
365 Railroad Ave.
Ridgefield, New Jersey 07657
(201) 941-2548
antinelandscape@gmail.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 Neighbor Podcast brought to you by the Bergen Neighbors Media Group. Coming to you live from Bergen County, I'm in Harrington Park and I'm joined by Joe Antine, who's coming to us from Ridgefield, new Jersey. Joe is the owner of Antine Landscape Design, coming to us from Ridgefield, new Jersey.
Speaker 3:Joe is the owner of Antine Landscape.
Speaker 2:Design Contractors. Joe, welcome to the show. Hello, how are you doing? Thank you, yeah, good. Yeah, I had mentioned you're in Ridgefield. I asked if you knew my wife's family, which is the Afiro clan of Palisades Park. A lot of them are in the building business, but you don't. But that's okay. Not everybody knows who they are, but whenever I meet somebody from that part of Bergen County I always ask, because I'd say 50% of the time they know one of them. But anyway, going back, since we're going back a ways, so you're the owner of the company, how long have you guys been in business this year?
Speaker 3:is going to be 52 years. How long have you guys been in business? This year is going to be 52 years, nice, yeah, I started when I was in 1973, august 15th. I bought out a maintenance business and, you know, before I was 25, I bought two other companies. So I bought three companies before I was 25.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:Built up the maintenance business uh to where we had 85 accounts um and uh companies and apartment buildings and homes and uh, then we were doing you know um landscape design work during that time as well. Yeah, when I, you know, the first year I was in business, I had my first back surgery. That was 1974. 1987, which is like 13 years later, I guess I had my second back surgery. That's when I made my decision to get out of the maintenance business and just do the landscape design stuff.
Speaker 2:Got it. Let's go get out of the maintenance business and just do the landscape design stuff got it so.
Speaker 3:So from 1987 we're, you know, only doing actual design and installation of all the hardscape and the plantings as well okay.
Speaker 2:So where, where did you get the um, the courage or the idea that somebody who's in their 20s not even 25, 25, could buy three companies? I mean, what did you know? Who the heck are you? Who the heck are you to start buying companies when you're 22 years old?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I was going to school for accounting and it's kind of funny. I was selling hot dogs in Fort Lee and Hiram's and one of the members in there one of the workers, his uncle was selling a maintenance business. So that's basically how I got started and it worked out so well. I said, wow, like let me just buy out a couple of more companies. Wow.
Speaker 2:So you made that much money selling hot dogs?
Speaker 3:No, no, I think I was getting paid $2.25 an an hour, if I'm not mistaken. Okay, it's funny, but um, uh, it's all worked out very well and it's, you know, the accounting knowledge is very important. Sure, I was always very good in artwork, you know I they wanted to send me to school on scholarships for drawings and paintings and so on, and, and you can't have money doing that. So landscaping is art.
Speaker 3:On a bigger scale, I knew that I had to start from the bottom and get the maintenance down and see how the properties are all laid out. And I was going to school for landscape, took some courses in landscape design, soil structures, plant identification, landscape, took some courses in landscape design, soil structures, plant identification. So I was doing going to school at night. Uh, and you know, learning this material and learning on the job as well, um, pretty much it. Yeah, you know, it's the construction. More exciting, your maintenance is. Anybody can do maintenance and you want to be one of few, not one of many. So I wanted to get out of the maintenance and because I had all these back issues, I said, all right, now we have to make the move and bail out of maintenance completely, because I couldn't be in two places at once. So we decided at that moment to just do landscape design, and we never went back, and that landscape design is way bigger than all three of those maintenance companies.
Speaker 2:So by maintenance you mean like mowing lawns and doing spring cleanups and fall cleanups.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's steady work and you can make a living out of that. But, like I said, anybody could do it. And you can make a living out of that, but, like I said, anybody could do it. You know you could, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, when you say that, I always I always remark like how, in my neighborhood every house has a different. You know they call them landscapers, but to be honest, like you said, more maintenance work, but everybody's got a different guy. Like there's a different truck every day of the week at somebody else's house. Yes, I've always marveled at that, like why wouldn't somebody just come in like if you know, if you were doing this now, or if I decided to do I go door to door and knock on doors and say, hey, I'm doing your neighbors? I mean, some people get turned off by that, I guess nowadays too. But point is, I was always surprised like everybody's got a guy, you, everybody's got their own guy, but very few of them know anything about plants.
Speaker 2:Correct house eight years ago um, yeah, you know, there's like okay, they could tell me what deer resistant plants are today, but nobody really knew how to design something or if they wanted to design it. I had a guy quoted me like forty thousand dollars when I was moving into my house to like you know, kind of reshape the, the plant beds. I was like, yeah, and maybe that's what it cost. But at that time, yeah, I thought I could do it myself, and now I can't do it myself landscape design, uh, really makes a big difference in, uh, the home.
Speaker 3:In other words, like you're coming home to your castle. Your house is a castle, you're dressing it up and a lot of it has to do with, um, how you design it. Like you have, um, you know, entranceways, your steps, your walkways, your driveways everything's got to function correctly and make it look beautiful as well. So you try to stay away from straight walkways. You do curved walkways from the street to the front door, also to the driveway on either side, and there's different widths. When it comes to driveways, you know each car is 10 by 20, that area. So you would design your driveway with backup areas and approach in the garage the correct way. So it's very technical and very, you know it's all has to be. Everything has to be done in scale. So when we do the, and then you have the patios I'll just go through that real quick we design patios where you have a sitting area, a cooking area, an area to display your food, yeah, and then you have traffic areas to get you to those three. So you don't just put in a big square patio, you have a separate area for each area. And then we designed walkways to accommodate it. This way there's no traffic jams and not walking into tables and so on, and everything's done in circles and curves and it just functions correctly and makes it very beautiful and different elevations.
Speaker 3:So basically we take the customer's survey Usually it's in a scale of 1 to 20. And we blow it up into a scale that one inch equals eight feet and I pour everything in patios, tennis courts, pools, driveways, walkways All the drainage work is very critical. Pools, driveways, walkways all the drainage work is very critical. And then by me drawing it all up, you know I have a system where we price out by linear footage for curbs and square foot of walkways and patios and driveways and we pretty much, you know I can on a basic home, I can set up a meeting, walk in, have the survey, make my notes, actually go back to my truck, blow it up into a big scale, walk back in and then price out jobs almost all the way to $100,000 with no sweat. If it's anything bigger than that, I take it back to the office and draw it up on a bigger sheet of paper. But I pretty much basically draw the whole property house, driveways, walkways.
Speaker 2:That's computer-aided design so you can walk somebody through it. They can visualize what it's going to look like.
Speaker 3:Yes, so when you have an aerial view, we don't do it by computer because I'm too fast with it on paper, but it's when they would open it up and draw lines with these programs. It's old fashioned. I guess you know what I'm saying. But I was always good in artwork, like I said, and all I had to do was scale and get everything down. And we do a lot of stone walls, different elevations, excavation, you know it's pretty much it. And I've actually built a. I have a strip mall that I have built. So I know construction, quite a bit of construction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's impressive, and so what are you seeing as like trends right now in landscape design?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, everybody looks at things differently. So when people are looking to buy, to hire a contractor, a lot of times I hear people just say you know, I want a patio, and the person has an idea that you know, they just want to do this square area and most contractors will just do what the client wants, versus when I go in there I tell them you know, you should have your property laid out a different way, Hear me out. And most of the times that's how I make my sale, because it makes sense, it's common sense and you know. And that's just on a patio area and that's very critical. Elevations are very critical. And then when you impress the person with taking their survey, blowing it up and walking back into the house in the same visit and pricing out the entire job that's pretty much you know has a big thing in sales. You know they said, wow, look at this, Look what he just did, you know, and it's very exciting work.
Speaker 3:So there's a misconception about landscapers. Like you said before, people say no, a landscaper is a guy who just cuts grass. We don't even own a lawnmower since 1987. You know what I mean. That's a long time. Very few jobs. There's never a job that I refuse, and even dangerous jobs, Like we could work by cliffs, where people would say, oh no, this can't be done. We design projects that are so big that contractors would say a job would be designed by a landscape architect or architects.
Speaker 3:They'd be squares. You know, I did a job down for Daewoo electronics years ago. They had three architects. They narrowed it down to one over a five-year span. Two out of three contractors said the job's too big. Go to joe and teen. And I went in there and I just redesigned the whole thing. The guy says I says what are you doing? This is not the right layout. I think I was looking out because, uh, you know, architects think in squares. Okay, we think in circles. You know, I, I designed, uh, seven or eight circular patios and put an intercom system in their parking lot, a whole grand entrance into the, into the building. That's just.
Speaker 3:I'm trying to remember a couple other jobs, you know, yeah but, uh, it really, um, it's very exciting work because you're ripping the people's properties apart and putting them back together and it's there for many years. You know, I really appreciate it. We've never had any complaints in all the years of my quality of work, so that's another good thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of a good thing. Yeah, and you were saying that, uh like, drainage is a big issue or a big part of your business. Now, because you know I was I had mentioned, uh, before we went on air that in certain areas, like where I live in burton county, a lot of my neighbors are very wet backyards and you see them playing out front with their kids in the front yard. I'm like, why are you in the front yard? I get this huge backyard and then I got it's like a swamp back there in the spring. You, I'm like, why are you in the front yard? I got this huge backyard and then I go, it's like a swamp back there in the spring. You know we can't even go back there.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, there's not one job that I haven't resolved pertaining to drainage work. I mean, we've run 8,000 feet of pipe and that's only four inch pipe, so it's all grading. Your objective is grade the property away from the home so you don't get in the home, whether you're in the patio or grading. And if you can't do that, then you start putting in French drains and big seepage pits. You know big concrete tanks in there. You know, when the town forces us, there's a lot of times architects design the tanks in the wrong location I don't know how they get the information and then they call me in to resolve the issue and we have to remove the tank and put it in a different location. All stuff like this Drainage is very interesting.
Speaker 3:So you've got to catch the water off your roof. It comes down to liters, you know, from your gutters to your liters. We do the drainage pipes under the ground, get all that roof water away and then the rest of the property is all grading. So you have to grade it correctly, get the water to where you want it to go, and whether it's all the way to the back, to a back stream or to the street, um, and it's very critical because if not in landscaping is is nothing is level. The house goes up level but landscaping is all graded. Usually the combination is one inch every five feet in the direction that you want the water to go.
Speaker 3:When we do the actual work, we use a transit and shoot elevations on the whole property. On the whole property, uh, inside floor elevation of the first floor, all the steps down and regrade the um, the whole property, whether it's grass or patio or walkways, everything graded to that. Usually that scale one inch equals five feet. So, um, you know that's pretty much. Tell you that you know that's pretty much to tell you that.
Speaker 2:I mean, you've been in business for 50, you know 52 years. How do you like, how do you still have the desire, the passion to get up every day and do what you do?
Speaker 3:Well, I tell you the truth I love getting. It gets me out of bed, that's for sure, because I'm responsible for my men. But I enjoy talking to people and I enjoy designing. I mean it's so exciting to be able to build things. I mean I don't do any of the work, I haven't done the work in, I don't know.
Speaker 2:25 years the manual stuff. Yeah, the manual stuff.
Speaker 3:I do the sales. I set up the jobs. I show up on a job every day. We usually have two crews. We do, you know, two crews or two jobs at a time. When the job's big enough, we get both crews on the same job. I show up there. We make sure that the guys are working. My men with me, my men have been with me many years. I got guys with me over 30 years some of them, so they know the skill factor is probably better than me operating the machines at this point. But it's very cool because, like you know, when you finish the job, the people like they're in awe, yeah, like unbelievable gratification. It's not all about money. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:It's not money, yeah, and you know listen, when you look at a backyard that's been designed and that seems to be a trend, where people have these oasis backyards with their outdoor kitchens, it's not just a barbecue anymore, it's a kitchen. That's right we do a lot. You know pergolas and TVs and lounges and all that.
Speaker 1:But one of the things you know like. Why would you ever?
Speaker 2:leave. Why would you ever go on vacation? It looks like you got, you know, a resort in your backyard, especially if they have a pool. But it's also the use of stone. You know I love how natural stones can be incorporated into a yard that is obviously manufactured. You know you're designing it and reshaping it like a golf architect, but then the implementation of natural stone makes it look like it was always there. You know that was naturally meant to be there and I love that incorporation of it. Where do you know? What kind of stone do you typically use in this area? Is like blue stone or something like that? And where do you source it from?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we use field stone for the wall, got it, and we hand chisel all the stones. It's all custom work. Oh, wow, and you know. So the walls that you're looking at on your property we do out of fieldstone. So if there was a wall on your property line left side, back or right side that's facing your neighbor and we need to bring up the elevation, we use a keystone block wall which is a concrete block, because you're not looking at it, the customer's not looking at it, and that's a very structural wall. We build them, backfill. It level off the property. But any difference in elevation on the property we um use the field stone walls. So if you go to my website you'll see tons of them.
Speaker 3:I mean, we build um stone walls almost every day, whether they're one foot high or five feet high, and we use bluestone steps, solid bluestone steps. On the patio we use bluestone or brick pavers. Uh, unless there's a special call, I think we did one job with limestone. I don't recommend that because it's a soft stone and it collects the dirt much. But bluestone patios are expensive. Brick pavers we do a lot of them. You know different colors.
Speaker 2:And where do the field stone? Where does the stone actually come from?
Speaker 3:We get it from. Actually they come from pennsylvania. It gets distributed to western jersey and I have a supply house that delivers tractor trail loads of these stones, you know, maybe twice a month that's how much kind of like a mine, though it's like a field stone mine that they mine just like they would mine yeah, I don't know. They probably get the. The fieldstone is erratic. It's not flat, uh you're right you can do?
Speaker 3:um, we get like 18 pallets. Each pallet has a ton and a half of stone on it. So that's, that's how much stone comes in on a um, on a tractor, trailer, when we unloading that. We get those loads once or twice a month, you know, depending on the jobs a lot, of, a lot of times.
Speaker 3:Um, you know there's there's different walls, but so you have ledge, rock walls which are big boulders. We also can do that as well fuel stone. We try to um, it sits and it's very tight the patterns, because we chisel every stone and we're very and we're known it very. It's a trick in building stone walls a lot of guys don't know it.
Speaker 3:Um, so they stack the stone and they're backfilling the dirt and then three or four late, three or four years later, the walls collapsing. Yeah, my walls never collapse. There's a certain way of building it. You've got to build it like a pyramid and not use the dirt. My walls last forever. Even on my own house I have two five-foot walls and a three-foot wall. I did it 20 years ago and never molded.
Speaker 2:That's great. That's great, I think, like you said. So, your website is antene landscape designcom and when you go on there you can see some of these. Uh, you know there's a gallery of things that we talked about, whether it's the blue stone, the field stone, um, you know you get into into a lot of just when it comes to plantings, and I saw, you know you've talked about this, and I think we all realize like when you redo your landscape, you're improving the value of your home.
Speaker 2:But for me, it's always been about, when I do some kind of home improvement, it's the deciding factor was never about what kind of added value is this going to, you know, to bring to the resale value of my house? It's really more about how am I going to enjoy this while I'm living here? I'm not trying to flip the house. I'm going to live here for 10, 15 years. So, yes, it helps to add value to the home, family, to walk back there or pull up into the driveway and see something that's, you know, visually appealing, stunning, the use of, you know, natural materials. I love that and how you've incorporated that.
Speaker 2:And you know things have changed in 52 years. But I think some things that don't change are, you know, the serenity of grass and you know interesting. Like you said, you think in circles, not in squares, and I think it's great. I really. The fact that you've been doing this for the many years that you've done it, I think, is, you know, it's a testament to your passion and your skill and, obviously, the customer service that you provide and the testimonials you've garnered over the years. So it's so, joe, how would people get ahold of you? I mentioned your website. Is there a phone number? Or they follow you on Instagram, or where do people find you?
Speaker 3:Well, I have my email right. My email is oh yeah, so my email.
Speaker 2:By the way anybody wondering who that is? That's his, that's my wife.
Speaker 3:She hooked me up with the computers. I'm not too computer savvy. Yeah, old fashioned. But, I have to be out on the field to make sure the jobs are done right. Never mind in the office playing with computers, Anteenlandscape@ gmail. com, okay, and my office number is 2 0 1 9 4, 1 2 5, 4, 8. And um? Pretty much yeah.
Speaker 2:Then we mentioned the website is and teen landscape designcom. And you traveled you. I mean obviously you're in Bergen County and um you'll travel.
Speaker 3:You know, like, uh, rocklandland, essex, I mean. Well, if the job's big enough. Actually, people have sent me down to shore to design their second homes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, the furthest I had to go away was Rhode Island. I had to do a job over in Rhode Island so you set up the cruise and all the way up there. So when people have second homes, they trust me to do their job.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that makes sense when we do a job I wanted to mention this to you is when we start a job, we do not leave it Like my crew goes there until that job is done. And that includes like like say, for instance, they give me a certain amount of work and then they want me to do more work, yeah, so basically I just stay there. We don't, we don't leave the person and come back. We don't do multiple jobs at the same time. So we've been very efficient. We knock the jobs out very quickly because we know what we're doing, and that's a big factor, because people always get tied up. The guy showed up and then he doesn't go back for five days. Yeah, he's the's in disarray. So we don't work like that. We're like a task force. We go in there and get out, and you know.
Speaker 3:When it comes to landscaping I can mention this to you as well you know you have a homeowner's job. You have a contractor that doesn't know what he's doing, and then you have a contractor that knows what he's doing, and then you have a contract that it knows what he's doing, and there's varieties of all in between that. So you basically get what you pay for and it is your castle when you come home. You want to function correctly and make it look beautiful. You know, yeah, and the plantings are very critical as well. The location of the plantings, the growth. You have to have room for it to grow, but it still has to look full.
Speaker 2:It's like putting the right dress on the woman, yeah, and then you know, maybe they don't want to admit this, but sometimes you know, your body changes over time and the dress has to be altered and you know our backyards changed all of a sudden you know the plants are growing or the deer have gotten to them, or we didn't realize it was a drainage issue, or it hasn't rained in a while, so things like that.
Speaker 2:This was great. I really appreciate you being on the show and sharing your wisdom and your passion, and we are going to just have Chuck play some music here and you and I will be right back, okay.
Speaker 3:Very good.
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 GNPBergen. com. That's GNPBergen. com, or call 201-298-8325.