Chris Kolb's Twenty-Five Year Journey To Kolb Custom Land Services: An (Entertaining) Memoir 

I was a grain of salt in a rainbow pepper grinder, living in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn in 1999; a New England boy fresh from the flats of Monomoy where I dug the famous Chatham steamers to pay for my collegiate room and board obligations. I had a fresh Ivy League, Bachelor of Arts in art and design from Brown University, a blank “professional” resume, and curiosity enough to dive into the boiling frenzy of the dot-com era in Lower Manhattan. I was working tirelessly for a fellow alum who launched an internet startup and raced to create the first online hub for Wall Street.

We worked in an antique, ill-fated building one block south of the World Trade Centers. We shared the suite with an old-school lower Manhattan legal firm. They smoked cigars indoors and drank bourbon in the early afternoon. There was an ionizer that zip-zapped away futilely, but obscured the off-color Glengarry Glen Ross jokes from the other side.

Among my myriad New York City walkabouts, I meandered up to the Washington Heights district of Manhattan in search for an affordable lease. My gaze was lured away by pointillistic, Seuratian specks of floral color and verdant chartreuse foliage framed by an Elizabethan archway of gracefully nodding American Elms. My gate followed my eyes northward from the 190 Street stop off the ‘A’ train, across Margaret Corbin Plz and into the Olmsted Sons’, Fort Tryon Park Trust, The Heather Garden. The vista across the blooming Heaths and ephemeral Virginia Bluebells revealed the Hudson River and Palisades beyond. There was no wonder why the mid-19th century Hudson River School of landscape painters established themselves here. The medieval Metropolitan Museum of Arts (Met) Cloisters stood starkly, northward still. I introduced myself to a staff member, Greg Kramer, a friend and colleague I have stayed in contact with all this time. I decided to slough off my business suit and take up an opportunity to get my hands dirty, once again toiling among the earth, the miracle of life, the exquisite beauty that thrived right there in Upper Manhattan. What a gem!

Since that spontaneous Manhattan debut, I have dedicated over twenty years to the trade, moving on to apprenticeships with regionally renowned landscape designers, plantsman, and custom landscape builders in New England and the San Francisco Bay Area of California. I have spent countless hours autodidactically researching ornamental plant manuals, horticulture, botanical garden world collections; stonework and stone art, art and design. I take keen interest in data that supports sustainable land management and sound landscape business accounting methods to support that mission. My independent research and trial-and-error discoveries have allowed me to innovate a landscape practice unlike any other in the Cape Cod & South Shore region.

I didn’t completely give up on financial services recognizing a necessary evil in that (publicly) nebulous world. So, I have remained SEC registered as an IA with Series 7 and 66 securities licenses sponsored by Belpointe Asset Management in partnership with local Apercu Wealth Management and Business Consultants.

How does this dual experience apply? It helps ensure sustainable landscape business practice and my permanence in a highly competitive, no barrier to entry industry. Custom Landscaping is my true calling. This is no fly-by-night operation. I provide additional value to customers as an astute planner and boots-on-the-ground "landscape advisor" and project manager, able to splice high-level life priorities with outdoor living aspirations and the nitty gritty of financial budgets! I thoroughly enjoy helping folks increase the value of their coastal real estate while they enrich their outdoor living experience.

I reside and have my HQ sandwiched between the majority of the geographic region of Cape Cod and the Boston Metro South Shore on an acreage in the Town of “Sandwich” with my lovely wife, two beautiful daughters, two Aussiedoodles, one tortoiseshell house cat, two goats, some koi, chickens (when the raccoons don’t get to them), wild turkeys, coyotes, and other critters.

How does this dual experience apply? It helps ensure sustainable landscape business practice and my permanence in a highly competitive, no barrier to entry industry. Custom Landscaping is my true calling. This is no fly-by-night operation. I provide additional value to customers as an astute planner and boots-on-the-ground "landscape advisor" and project manager, able to splice high-level life priorities with outdoor living aspirations and the nitty gritty of financial budgets! I thoroughly enjoy helping folks increase the value of their coastal real estate while they enrich their outdoor living experience.

I reside and have my HQ sandwiched between the majority of the geographic region of Cape Cod and the Boston Metro South Shore on an acreage in the Town of “Sandwich” with my lovely wife, two beautiful daughters, two Aussiedoodles, one tortoiseshell house cat, two goats, some koi, chickens (when the raccoons don’t get to them), wild turkeys, coyotes, and other critters.