About Us

We’ve told you in our “Blog Inspiration” section what the purpose of  this site is, but thought it might be nice to share a little about  ourselves and how we came to start our business.

Here goes…

We started our family landscaping business over 20 years ago because  we both share a love for nature. While we both were raised in the  Milwaukee area, our interest in landscaping came from different  childhood experiences.

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John’s family built a home in New Berlin back in the 1970’s on a  three acre lot. Back then, much of New Berlin was rural and so there was  a lot of work to be done on the lot planting trees, moving soil, and  establishing a yard. 

John spent a lot of time with his father doing just that. His  memories include helping his father dig the “Nile” as they called it. It  was basically a drainage swale that ran the length of his front yard  that collected and moved water during a rainstorm. Together, he and his  dad spent many a weekend digging this impressive swale with only two  hand shovels. The dirt they excavated was piled into a small trailer that his dad’s Simplicity tractor pulled, and then drove to another part  of the yard to be shoveled back out again. While the physical work was  hard, that experience of working with the land creating other things  like a fieldstone wall and digging saplings out of a tree line to plant  on the property, really stuck with John.

Christine’s introduction to nature was different in that she grew up  in a city setting. Her parents liked to take the family to Whitnall Park  every weekend to walk the trails and look at the beautiful gardens.

Christine remembers how her mother would stop along a walk and point  out to her and her sisters, things like the way leaves had different  vein structures or how plants dropped their seeds. It was Christine’s  mom that always said  “look”, “smell”, “touch”, “listen”, that  cultivated  this curiosity about nature, pause for observation, and  focus on detail – which to this day, is still a motivating connection  Christine makes  with landscaping.

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Since those childhood days, we both took a more serious approach to  starting a business.  We each pursued a business degree and we both  expanded our horticultural knowledge and skill set through formal  classes, industry experience and a lot of learning as we go which was  the most fun! 

Our entrepreneurial spirit, combined with the excitement of growing  something of value, has motivated us these past two decades to take joy  and pride in what we do.

“Beauty by Nature…Function by Design” is our slogan and it really  does describe what we’re all about. We recognize that our outside world  is gifted to us and we are given the opportunity to responsibly shape it  into what we deem as most important  to us.

With that … we close. Thank you for getting to know us a little better!

John & Christine Wollenziehn

Owners of Spring Gardens Landscaping & Horticultural Services, Inc