How Juniper Landscaping Uses Drone Data to Visually Document their Projects

Integrating New Technologies in the Landscaping Business

Nobody knows the difficulty of introducing new technology to a traditional industry and garnering customer buy-in like John Dougherty, Vice President of Maintenance Sales at Juniper Landscaping. An over 20-year veteran in the green industry, John works with salespeople and homeowners associations throughout the state of Florida to better understand customer needs and industry trends. “A huge problem in this field is that knowledge goes and dies with whoever the maintenance team is on-site,” John explains, referring to the lack of information sharing and transparency between independent contractors and homeowners associations. Juniper Landscaping hopes to break this trend using DroneDeploy, by creating this pivotal information (3D models, maps, and more) for their clients. “We’re willing to pay to see that drone use is the wave of the future,” John states.

Viewed as highly adept in technology within their industry, Juniper Landscaping encourages their team to use drone data on select projects. Drone insights gleaned from digital reconstructions add value to client interactions and provides a clear, referenceable record of work. “Incremental improvements in landscaping aren’t usually seen day-to-day,” John says, “so seeing these changes visually after six months is crucial.”

Challenging Use Cases in the Field

When bidding on new jobs, Juniper Landscaping uses DroneDeploy’s cut/fill tool to manage earthworks. Not only does this save extra time and effort through labor costs, but it also allows maintenance and construction estimators to measure the property through annotations easily. One $500 million project – the World Equestrian Center in Ocala, Florida – was entirely built with drone imagery and had over 1,200 annotations by the time they finished. These annotations allowed workers to completely break down a project so it was easier to dissect, including determining total square footage, applicable work, and exact cost of labor.

Finding Value in Flight Services

Because landscaping is often a manual enterprise, John enjoys using DroneDeploy’s Flight Services for on-demand drone capture. This way, they can receive the data they need without researching drone hardware or FAA regulations. “We want our workers to be focusing on the core parts of their job,” John explains, “not training them on drone technology.” Utilizing Flight Services for large properties is inherently cost-beneficial, as they can order flights as they see fit, without a large investment.