Collaboration cornerstone of local landscaping company

It’s a simple premise, really, according to Dave Rooney.

“He designs, we install … we collaborate,” he said, motioning across the table and back.

The “he” is John Fitzgerald. The “we” is Rooney Landscape, a familiar name in the Northwest suburbs with its fleet of red trucks traversing from one job site to another. And the “we is Rooney and Fitzgerald, who together are taking the process of landscape design to new, more user-friendly heights.

The pair, who began working together nearly a dozen years ago, take a customer’s grand landscaping dream and turns it into reality — from the first rough sketch, to the emailed video introducing themselves, all the way until the final brick is put in place.

The Arlington Heights-based business specializes in the taking the project from start to finish with the personal attention of the owners.

Though their businesses are independent of one another, Fitzgerald knew from the moment he saw Rooney’s handiwork that the collaboration could work.

“When I moved here 12 years ago I went out on my own to design and the way my jobs were being installed, they were awful,” he said. “The company would say, ‘This is the work we do’ I said ‘No, no no.’

“So I went out to look for a landscaper I could work with, and there were three houses in my neighborhood that had excellent landscaping. … I went up to the those houses to find out who did the landscaping and Dave did all three of them. So I contacted Dave and said, ‘How do we make this work?’”

It wasn’t long before his beliefs were backed up.

“I think it was the third job we were on and a plant showed up that I didn’t like and I called the office and there was no question — send it back,” said Fitzgerald, a graduate of Ohio State University. “From then on there hasn’t been a question. I just call up. Again, it’s just the same goals. This is how it’s done right.”

After a couple of starts and stops with other designers, Rooney, a St. Viator High School alum, still counts his blessings that Fitzgerald contacted him.

“This is when I knew it was going to work,” Rooney said. “A lot of designers don’t want to get their hands dirty. John insisted on it. What that gives the customer is the peace of mind in making sure that this gets installed the way it was sold.

“John instills an enormous amount of confidence. From a design standpoint, we’re going to hear what you’re saying, put it on paper and then the Rooney guys are going to come in and install exactly the way we sold it to you in your kitchen.”

So, what happens when a job is complete and the customer isn’t satisfied?

“It’s never happened,” Rooney said.

“We have a walk-through before we collect the money,” Fitzgerald said. “We ask, ‘Is this what you want?’”

And the answer is almost always yes.

“I think on a small scale,” Rooney said, “we’ve raised the bar in what can be done in landscaping.”