Corey Anhalt started MN Nice Gardens and Landscapes three years ago
The following article appeared in the Farmington Rosemount Independent Town Pages.
By Nathan Hansen, Editor
This summer will be the third in business for MN Nice Gardens and Landscapes, but in a lot of ways, it feels like a brand new start.
For one thing, as of last week the business has an office outside of the homes of the people who work there. There’s a brand new logo in the works. And everyone involved is ready for big things to happen.
Corey Anhalt has been working toward this moment since he was in high school. His father was in lawn care, and Anhalt always knew he’d go into the landscape business. He studied at Dakota County Technical College, then worked a series of jobs with other landscape businesses in the area. Every decision he made along the way was geared toward learning what he needed to know to run his own business. In his first internship, Anhalt was given a choice between working with designers or doing installation. He chose installation, because he figured if he knew how to install the products he was selling it would eventually make it easier to design and to meet with clients.
Now that he’s in business for himself, Anhalt does mostly hardscape. He designs and builds stone patios and natural areas.
In everything he does, the focus is on sustainable landscaping practices. He works with native plants. He works with stone that is mined locally to reduce the fossil fuels needed for transportation.
“I think it’s important for everybody,” he said. “It’s one of those things where, as we move farther and farther from the earth, as we stop dropping houses onto what once was prairie land and now is corn, we just move farther and farther away from the earth and it affects the ecosystem majorly.
“It’s kind of a domino effect where you have to bring some of that stuff back and find a balance to co-exist.”
Eventually, Anhalt would like to operate a sustainable nursery filled with native plants.
For now, though, he just keeps getting busier, which is what led him to open an office.
The more work he got, the harder it was to have employees working from their own homes.
“You get more paperwork as you get more involved,” he said. “It’s just organized chaos, more or less. It’s inefficient to work that way. If you leave a document at home, it just doesn’t work.”
Three years into things, it feels like a brand new beginning.
“Each year gets consistently busier and consistently more complicated,” he said. “It’s all gone pretty well.”
