Mark Masseo has always believed in hard work and community service. So in October, as proprietor of Masseo Landscaping Inc. in Tillson, he donated $3,000 worth of plants shrubs and materials to New Paltz High school to beautify the school”™s courtyard. He was especially pleased, he says, by the eagerness of the students and teachers to get their hands dirty for a good cause.
Masseo lives in New Paltz with his wife Bonne and their two young children. A 1998 graduate of New Paltz High School, he officially started his business in 1999, between semesters at SUNY-Morrisville where he earned a degree in horticulture. But in a sense, he started his business while other kids were still figuring out the combinations on their high school lockers.
“I knew from the time I was 10 years old what business I wanted to be in,” said Masseo. “I am the classic American story of that kid with a lawnmower doing the neighbor”™s lawn, and tackling backyard projects no one else wanted to do. I had basically a full fledged business in high school. I had 35 customers before I graduated.”
Seemingly a natural businessman, he contacted contractors when he graduated from Morrisville and solicited work. “They appreciated a young guy starting out,” he said, especially one who prided himself on his professionalism.
That was at a time of a housing boom with small developments proliferating. “We worked for weeks at a time at a single development, working on one house and then moving a few doors down.”
Masseo specializes in the “backyard oasis,” he said and can create a landscape around a yard, or around a swimming pool or plan and build and a patio. “We are a full service company from design to installation to maintenance,” Masseo said, adding that of course his company will still cut lawns, but is also known for installations and landscaping.
The formula has worked well. “Before you know it, six seven eight years down the road and you are dealing with growing pains,” he said, saying he went from a DBA to a corporation in 2003 and in 2004 purchased a building to serve as company headquarters in Tillson. That purchase was done with the help of Ulster Savings Bank. Given the current credit crunch, he said, “Now I look at it and I can”™t believe how easy it was to do.”
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But business brings only so much satisfaction and Masseo feels compelled to serve the community as much as he can find time and outlets to do so. A past president of the New Paltz Rotary in 2005 and still an active member, he notes that Rotary International is the world”™s largest volunteer service organization with 1.2 million volunteers worldwide in 161 countries.
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He had done Rotary projects in New Paltz, including a cozy plaza where Main Street meets the rail trail, but was particularly taken when Bonne, a teacher at the high school, said that Cathy Law, science teacher and adviser to the environmental club, wanted to landscape the school”™s court yard.
“When Bonne came home and told me about this courtyard idea, I was all over it,” said Masseo, adding that the company has purchased a nursery and had a wealth of plants and shrubs to contribute. But the size of the endeavor grew, he said, sparked by the enthusiasm of the originator. When she went to the nursery, “Cathy was like a kid in the candy store, and that made the giving easier,” Masseo said. So instead of providing some 20-30 plants he gave away 200 plants, and materials estimated at about $3,000.
The plan to use the planting experience as a teaching tool won him over. “I like to see kids get involved,” Masseo said. “They need to know that a lot of hard work is needed to be successful.”
Law had done her homework and the selection was very intelligently made, he said, to match the climate the plants will encounter in the courtyard, choosing xeriscape plants with drought-tolerant properties.
“That”™s exactly what it needs, because no one is really going to maintain it and because you have four walls around it, giving it reflective heat and full sun,” Masseo said of conditions in the courtyard. “Its like Arizona, similar to that climate, hot and arid, even though you get rain here, the soil dries out quickly because of all the heat.”
The installation was particularly challenging, he said because there had been no planning given to creating a landscaped courtyard, so the soil condition were “Typical construction-grade fill.”
The result is satisfying on two levels, he said: what it will mean to students and teachers immediately and a generation from now, and what it taught students about everything from plants to teamwork.
“There needs to be this generosity out there to show kids what”™s possible,” said Masseo.
