An existential crisis for the franchise ensued within the first year when the franchisor of American Lawn Service went into bankruptcy and Tyrrell was asked by their bank to buy out the enterprise for what today would only amount to the cost of a fine dining experience for a family of five! With the goal of ultimately impacting the landscape using the principles learned in his upbringing, Tyrrell quickly built a reputation for adding value to the landscapes of Greater Milwaukee. He developed a client base with long-standing relationships that still persevere to this day.
As the company outgrew its facilities, Tyrrell migrated his business to a small shop, first in Butler, and eventually to the southern end of Menomonee falls, which in the mid 1970’s, was still a sleepy farming community.
As the company grew, so followed the need for more equipment and increasingly larger facilities. American Landscape settled at its current location on Kohler Lane in Menomonee Falls in 1989. At the time, Kohler Lane was an empty road next to a farmer’s field. Today it is part of a bustling business park which houses Kohl’s Corporate headquarters among a number of other businesses, adjacent to fully developed residential subdivisions.
The offering of services expanded rapidly with Tyrrell changing the company name to “American Landscape” in 1993 which better suited its vastly more diverse identity. For decades, Tyrrell served as the company’s guiding light. His experience in landscape maintenance, design and development, and snow management services are steeped in breadth. Until 2018, Tyrrell had worked, planned, and helped lead in every aspect of the company’s existence.
In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, Tyrrell and his son, Shea began to have long distance discussions about joining the family business as Shea had a desire to run the company. Shea’s training was as a CPA and at the time was serving as a controller for a manufacturing company in Tennessee. With the timing being right, in 2002 the talk became reality: Shea uprooted his young family and returned to his roots in Wisconsin to help shape the next phase of American Landscape’s future.
In the time since, Shea has made it his mission to take American Landscape to the next level. Under his leadership, the company has experienced significant growth in all key company landscape service ventures, particularly in design and development, a stronger supervisory staff, an advanced sales team, and implementation of fresh ideas for productivity and customer service.
New Leadership & New Snow Removal Division
In 2004, Shea became President of American Landscape and created American Snow Professionals. This important division of American Landscape had the ability to focus exclusively on commercial snow and ice management. As American Snow Professionals grew, the company expanded its facilities to include a state-of-the-art salt storage building which protected its winter clients against the possibility of salt shortages affecting their winter service. The facility houses more than 5,000 tons of salt, allowing the company the capacity, standing alone against any other local competitor, to literally guarantee more than an entire season’s supply of salt prior to the first snow flake falling.
At the same time as the snow operation grew, so too have the company’s landscape design and construction operation, commercial and residential landscape maintenance, as well as its r divisions. Today, American Landscape is a mainstay at the forefront of the Landscape and Snow Management industries, offering comprehensive services toward total property care and improvement. Since 2019, the company has been recognized by the Wisconsin Landscape Contractors Association with an astounding 20 project location awards of excellence in landscape design/construction and landscape maintenance – more awards of excellence than any of its statewide peers. In addition, the National Association of Landscape Professionals has recently recognized American Landscape for its second-to-none safety program.
During Shea’s tenure, the company redoubled its efforts to have the newest and best-kept equipment in the industry. In 2021, the corporate offices were gutted down to the studs and transformed into a modern, inviting and efficient environment with improved use of space for better functionality as well as the incorporation of cutting-edge technology.
