By Camille Gillies

If you’e a New Tampa or Wesley Chapel-area homeowner, you know how challenging it is to keep your lawn looking lush and lovely. For many of us, it’s nearly impossible unless you have a background in horticulture or enlist some professional help. The weeds, the pests, the stressed-out grass, the list of annoyances goes on and on. That’s why it’s so important to hire experienced pest control, lawn care and irrigation specialists.

If you’re still looking for top-notch lawn care and/or pest control, two area businesses have teamed up to tackle your lawn maintenance headaches. Although not officially partners, and each owning his own business, friends Charlie Wolfle and Frank Lauria have been working in tandem for the past five years to provide their customers with the best landscape service possible.

Charlie owns Green Rangers, a full-service lawn care and pest control company, and Frank owns FL Waterworks, specialists in irrigation. Together, they can establish a landscape design from inception to completion, and provide the maintenance necessary to keep it green and healthy for the long term.

“If I notice chinch bugs, grubs or worms at one of my customer’s properties, I refer them to Charlie,” says Frank. “If he sees dying grass at one of his customer’s homes and knows it’s not caused by a pest problem, he refers them to me. Many times the grass is suffering because there is an area that isn’t being irrigated properly and I can fix that for them.”

 

FL Waterworks

Located in Tampa, FL Waterworks serves customers in Pasco, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. A licensed irrigation contractor, Frank offers services that include installation and redesign of irrigation systems, general sprinkler system repair, valve repair, wire tracking and fault finding. The Tampa native started the company five years ago, after working for Walt DisneyWorld in Lake Buena Vista, where he spent a year maintaining the extensive irrigation systems throughout the Disney theme park system.

He says honesty and integrity are the hallmarks of FL Waterworks.

“A lot of irrigation contractors cut corners by using inferior products,” he comments. “I use only real irrigation wire and quality parts and equipment. I pride myself on quality workmanship and I always strive to save money for my customers.”

One way he watches each customer’s dollar is by monitoring the amount of time a system is running to make sure it is working efficiently.

“You can water your grass too much, and then you are just wasting water and stuck with a big utility bill,” Frank explains, adding that he is very conscientious about water usage and conservation.

His customers include both residential and commercial accounts, such as office complexes and the common areas of large communities. He guarantees that he will stick with a job until it is completed to the customer’s satisfaction. “I am not done with a job until it’s done right,” he states emphatically.

 

Green Rangers

Wolfle, the owner of Green Rangers, has been in business in the Tampa Bay area for 21 years. Located in Land O’ Lakes, his company serves commercial and residential customers primarily in New Tampa, Wesley Chapel, Lutz and Land O’ Lakes.

It’s not surprising that Charlie refers business to his good friend Frank because Green Rangers is a tight-knit establishment. “We have a small, family-run business of five employees, including myself, and we are all either family or friends,” he says.

Charlie is a hands-on business owner who often goes out on job sites completing the work himself. Evidently, his customers appreciate his personal involvement because he says many of them have been loyal to his business throughout its 21-year existence.

One such long-term customer is Wesley Chapel resident Chuck Rizzo, who relies on Green Rangers to take care of lawn pest control and shrub pruning at his 1.5-acre property in Saddlewood Estates. Chuck says he met Charlie 20 years ago as the result of an advertisement in a church bulletin. “I had just built a house in Saddlewood and was looking for someone to do my lawn and shrub care,” Chuck recalls. “I hired Charlie and he’s been doing my lawn ever since.”

Chuck says he appreciates Charlie’s attention to detail, as well as his accessibility and fair pricing.

“He’s a good fellow to do business with, very straight forward,” says Chuck. “He surveys my property and tells me what needs to be done, but he also tells me if something can be done at a later time.”

The company also believes in offering flexible lawn maintenance programs to suit a variety of needs.

“We have several programs to fit people’s budgets,” Charlie comments. “We also offer free analysis and complimentary service calls.” Pest control can be contracted for as little as six months at a time and mowing contracts are yearly, with mowing services performed every week from April through October and every other week from November through March.

For his New Tampa-area clients, Charlie says that he is prepared for the new government-mandated restrictions on nitrogen that the Tampa City Council passed on June 23. The new ordinance, which goes into effect in 2012, bans the sale of nitrogen-packed fertilizer between June 1 and Sept. 30 and also prohibits residents from putting it on their lawns and gardens. Charlie says that he already has been employing other fertilizing alternatives for the last three years. “I have been using iron and a variety of micronutrients for several years now,” he says, so the ban won‘t have a significant impact on his customers.

Pasco County has yet to implement any kind of nitrogen-packed fertilizer ban, but if they do, Charlie will be equipped to comply with any new regulation.

In addition to pest control expertise and full-service lawn care, Green Rangers also features landscape design services. Charlie attended Farmingdale State College in Farmingdale, NY, where he studied landscape design.

“My father and uncles were all in the landscaping business in New York,” he notes. “With my background and years of experience, I am able to plan and install a customer’s landscaping and then care for it in all respects, from fertilizing and mowing to applying the pest control treatments.”

The area he doesn’t specialize in — irrigation — is Frank’s specialty, which makes for a friendly reciprocal arrangement between Green Rangers and Fl Waterworks.

For a free lawn analysis or more information about Green Rangers, call 949-9994. For irrigation services, call FL Waterworks at 239-7345 or visit FlWaterWorksIrrigation.com.

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