November 2003

Landscape Center Offers Options

Staker and Parson Co.’s Landscape Center provides aggregate products to public and private customers.

By Angie Moehlman

A house in Utah displays xeriscaping with aggregate products obtained from Staker and Parson’s Landscape Center.

With the state of Utah being a desert community, Staker and Parson Companies wanted to offer a unique way to battle drought with innovative landscaping options. The company’s new landscape center offers contractors, developers, landscapers, and the public the option to browse and purchase products for their landscaping needs.
Staker and Parson works to be the preferred source of quality aggregates, construction materials, and services for a wide variety of contractors, businesses, government agencies, municipalities, and homeowners. Staker and Parson Companies are the Intermountain Region’s largest producers of sand and rock products, ready-mixed concrete, asphalt, paving, and construction employing more than 2,000 at more than 30 locations. From its already well-established base of producing aggregate for the Intermountain Region, it was an easy step to decide to open a landscape center. According to Brent Burr, sales manager for Materials Division at Staker and Parson, “Companies in the construction industry get lumped into a generalization that they only do highways or big projects and make no difference to the general public. At Staker and Parson, we are dedicated to serving the communities in which we work and live, as they are a reason for our success.
“The Landscape Center is a way for us to give back to the communities and offer them the great products that come from our state’s own natural resources,” says Burr.
The Landscape Center offers materials in bulk that can be used in xeriscaping, a water-efficient landscaping strategy that allows creating and maintaining a varied, colorful garden while conserving water.
“In this time of drought, we each must do our part to conserve water and with water rates expected to increase up to 5 cents, we wanted to offer products that helped in that conservation without compromising a beautiful landscape,” says Burr.
More than 50 products are available for purchase at the Landscape Center, including rock, sand, bark, soil pads, chats, playground sand, and mulch. According to Burr, the majority of the products available at the Landscape Center are produced by Staker and Parson.
“These are the more popular products such as cobbles, multi-colored cobble rock, sand, and gray rocks,” says Burr. “However, some of the red rocks are only available from southern Utah or out of state, so we work with sister companies to bring those in.”
Not only does the Landscape Center provide materials for landscaping, but it also offers education for customers to learn how to xeriscape their own areas. “The center is more of a place to learn and a one-stop location,” says Burr. “A place to learn how to xeriscape, choose your own products, and then have it delivered or load it up yourself.”
To process the landscape materials, Staker and Parson added a screening plant to its operations. “We just couldn’t justify running product through our regular crushing operations so we dedicated a screening plant to our Landscape Center, as well as a small loader and forklift,” says Burr.
As the only landscape center in the area that offers a diverse list of products from its own mining operations, Staker and Parson hopes to continue setting the trend for landscaping options in Utah. Adding landscape centers to its other plants may be Staker and Parson Companies’ next step. “We would love to have landscape centers at all of our plants to help better serve each community where we work and live,” says Burr.

The Landscape Center offers a unique set-up, with large bins separating the product for easy loadout into vehicles. The surrounding area is xeriscaped with the products available at the center.

Angie Moehlman is associate editor for Aggregates Manager. Contact angie@aggman.com