Celebrating 50 Years

In 1973, John Mini completed his first commercial plant installation. The project was for Richard Stein Hair Salon. The planting grounded the salon’s waiting area, a place to sit and socialize. It was wild, beautiful, and exotic.

John Mini was graduating Fordham College in the early 1970’s and applying to medical school with halfhearted aspirations of becoming a doctor. A career move that met his mother and her immigrant upbringing’s expectations. It was around this time he ditched his college job as a NYC taxi driver. 

John landed a job at a houseplant shop on 3rd Avenue called ‘Mother Nature’. Taxi driver to plant retailer. By 1972, John had impressed the owner and was promoted to manage ‘Mother Nature 2’, a storefront opening on Madison Avenue. Thoughts of medical school faded as he unearthed a passion for plants and business. 

At this job, John stumbled on an opportunity. The shop’s customers were local business owners. These customers returned with feedback. They loved their plants, but they couldn’t keep them alive. This was the moment the seed of our business was planted. 

The shop owner was not interested in leaving the retail business, so John set off on his own.

He committed to making his passion his profession. He was a horticulturalist and nature lover at heart. He was also a New Yorker through and through, coming to age in the city dubbed ‘The Concrete Jungle’. He was determined to make this city beautiful by bringing a slice of nature to the concrete jungle one plant program at a time. 

His plan: find and talk to a business, propose plants and pots for the space, find the plants and pots, install them, and keep those plants alive with a maintenance program. Then do it again. 

The rest is history. John was our founder and fearless leader for 40 years. The accolades and recognitions he and the team earned are too many to list. He left behind a growing team that continues to honor the name of the company he built. And, to this day his business cultivates thousands of beautiful sites, impacts millions of people in our community, and operates as an iconic New York business.

The interiorscaping industry in North America took off in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Interiorscaping may be generally described as the craft of delivering, installing and maintaining living plants indoors. More complexly, the industry encompasses knowledge and trades that span indoor design, architecture, urban development, property management, horticulture, botany and aspects of environmental sciences. 

In the 60’s industry greats such as Everett Conklin, Bruce Jensen, and Gerry Leider put interiorscaping on the map in North America. 

John Mini joined the fray in the 1970’s and swiftly made a splash. When John Mini and our first hire Ed Traynor were awarded the iconic indoor planting work at Ford Foundation in 1979, John recalls the incumbent proclaiming ‘who are these 2 young whipper snappers!’.

To this day, the industry continues to attract people passionate about indoor planting and the future looks bright as more 'young whipper snappers' join.

After supporting the early projects out of their home, John and Sue Ann Mini moved the business to a plant shop at 269 City Island Avenue, Bronx NY. 

There was a tiny closet in the back where John operated the business that would officially incorporate as John Mini Indoor Landscapes in 1977.

As the business picked up more commercial maintenance accounts, the business needed a bigger office. 

A few blocks down on City Island Ave, John sublet a small space from Artie’s Italian Restaurant. This space was used as an office, while the original plant shop was used for plant and material storage. 

In the mid to late 1970’s our business put out its first few roots. John Mini sold plant design, installation and maintenance to clients that included the Philippine Center, New Rochelle Phone Center, Bagel Nosh, and Magic Pan. 

In a speech by John Mini, he references Magic Pan as the company’s first project ever. Though, it has widely been noted that Richard Stein hair salon was the first installation. John might still have been employed at ‘Mother Nature’, a plant retail shop in Manhattan, while installing Richard Stein. Both Magic Pan and Richard Stein’s were installed in 1973, securing this as the inception year of the business.

The design trends of these installations spoke to an urban generation who desired to connect back with the ‘country’. Macrame and very wild and unkept planting designs were in vouge. Similar indoor design trends circled back in the late 2010’s to the early 2020’s.

Holiday Commercial décor became our second revenue stream. 

Holiday décor began slowly with Poinsettias in some of our accounts from 1974 such as Bonwit Teller & Co., a luxury department store on 5th Ave.

In 1977 we picked up momentum and grew the Holiday décor business with notable accounts such as regional malls and T.J. Lipton’s headquarters.  T.J. Lipton was a huge holiday installation requiring a few friends and family to execute.  

A timeless and favorite decoration was a set of giant posters of old NYC Christmas scenes at Time Warner Center. One banner featured a vintage photo of Santas in the classroom learning how to be Santa for the holiday retail season. The Santas are in class, in suit, attentive to their teacher and smoking cigarettes. In many ways this picture represents the design opportunities of holidays in New York City: playful, edgy, and always a destination.

In 1979 John Mini Indoor Landscapes consolidated  various facilities by moving to Fordham Street, City Island, renting a building on the waterfront from renowned sailmaker Herb Hild. 

In 1982, John added a greenhouse to the warehouse space, otherwise known as our treehouse. Islanders became familiar with the green and white trucks coming and going on City Island Ave and helped repurpose unused plants at our monthly plant sale. 

As we expanded further into indoor plantings and holiday décor, the business added a second greenhouse and bolted on a couple storage spaces in the area.

In the 1980's, John Mini pushed the limits. The company took on first of a kind atrium landscape projects and vastly grew the business. In these years, John Mini established our company's legacy and expectation of producing award winning work. A legacy that would earn us over 25 National Awards throughout the 80's. 

The first official John Mini Day took place in 1982 at PS79 in the Bronx. Prior to 1982 there were annual picnics and holiday parties.  John Mini Day was especially significant  to John. He valued the importance of team building and the recognition of all the teammates that built the business. 

Over the years, we hosted the annual John Mini Day at various places including the New York Botanical Gardens, the Bronx Zoo, PS 17 on City Island, Rye Playland, Fair Lawn Lanes in NJ,  Dave and Busters, the City Island Yacht Club, Boat Rides around Manhattan, and our Congers HQ.

One of the most memorable John Mini Days was in 2002.  The team returned to City Island to board the Riptide III and sail to the Financial Center, visiting the newly planted palm tress at the Winter Garden in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. 

Even during the first months of the COVID pandemic, we ensured the tradition carried on with a Virtual John Mini Day in 2020. An incredibly impactful commitment as it allowed the team to socially connect during uncertain times and signal of team's undying perseverance.

The business was taking root and John Mini made an early investment in one our timeless values: professionalism. 

In 1983 to 1984, we invested in our company’s first uniform. This kelly green shirt and vintage ‘John Mini Indoor Landscapes’ logo in white remains a retro fan favorite. 

While the uniform evolved over the years, our approach remains. We develop a ‘jersey’ that honors our team’s desire to be recognized as the technical professionals they are. 

And, our uniform draws inspiration from our New York Yankees. Whether you love or hate the Yankees, fans and professional baseball players know the significance of putting on a Yankee jersey. It means you are representing the best of all time.

At John Mini our uniforms are designed to inspire teammates to walk out the door and know they are representing the best in our industry. 

New York City was always our 'playground'. Our team's growth was enabled by the evolutions and expansion of New York City over the five decades we've conducted business. 

Around 1985, John Mini secured a lease for a satellite office near Union Square. This space served as a hub for our team's sales & design and horticulture teams. This space reinvented itself and moved a few times but remained a mainstay for the business for decades. In 2018 the business moved this satellite space to Long Island City, upgrading to space that offered an office hub in combination with an operating warehouse.

The first contemporary global financial crisis unfolded on October 19, 1987, a day known as “Black Monday,” when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 22.6 percent.

A chain reaction of market distress sent global stock exchanges plummeting in a matter of hours. In the United States, the Dow Jones drop was a loss that remains the largest one-day stock market decline in history. At the time, it also marked the sharpest market downturn in the United States since the Great Depression.

John Mini not only survived but thrived as its founder quickly changed the company's direction to go after customers who were shopping services.

John Mini and Rick Butchko are invited for the second time to the White House for award winning landscape work. 

First Lady Bush commends and honors the team for best-in-class work for their landscape service at Ford Foundation Atrium. 

In 1991 the New York Botanical Gardens recognized John Mini as the industry’s premier indoor horticulturalist. The NYBG asked John to create a curriculum that could be enrolled in pursuit of a Certificate in Interior Landscaping. Within 5 years the program was in full motion. John Mini and other teammates, including Bob Pressner and Rick Butchko, were teaching classes at the NYBG for this interior landscape course and the course had formalized to include accreditation toward college degrees with relevancy to Interior Landscaping.

As the company entered its third decade, our stellar reputation continued to solidify numerous incredible project opportunities. Our people were the ones to make it happen. As many of these teammates had started with the company in our first years, their knowledge and experience proved to be invaluable in taking on new, unexplored areas of indoor landscaping. By the end of the decade, our team's work led to a combined total of 56 National Awards, which was unprecedented in the industry.

A tragic, but indelible, moment over the course of our time in business was the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. 

It was a grim time that would rattle, but not break, our Nation and our city, New York. 

Beauty was found in the unity and strength of all Americans. Our country healed and moved forward, by coming together. Americans and New Yorkers responded in the moments of crisis. And, in the years following, we persevered through the loss and trauma by honoring our bravest countrymen and by rebuilding together.

Pictured here is the destruction of one of our marquee installations across the street from the twin towers. With the leadership of our client, Brookfield, and many proven contractors, we rebuilt and replanted. 

You’ll also find a letter thanking our teammates who responded in the moments of crisis to support their fellow New Yorkers. This is one of many examples that would be reported in the aftermath of 9/11. People from all over the tri-state and beyond did what they could, and at times, the extreme to support each other.

We’ll never forget.

It was with a heavy heart that we were forced to replant the sixteen palm trees in the Winter Garden in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks.

The replanting of the palms along with the reconstruction of the Winter Garden was an accomplishment that was felt not just in NY but throughout our country. In many ways, the project was a beacon of hope and resiliency. The replanting found it's way onto the front page of the New York Times on August 13, 2002.

All construction trades worked alongside each other, putting forth heroic efforts to reopen the Winter Garden by September 11, 2002.

When the first palm tree was brought into the building you could hear a pin drop, moments later the hundreds of workers on site broke into applause and cheers.

Without questions, this was one of our proudest moments.

It was 2003 and our company was still headquartered on Fordham Street in City Island, Bronx. At this point, we had bolted on four separate locations over the years. It was time to move to one larger facility to accommodate our current size and future growth. 

We mapped out our existing customer locations and where we intended to grow the business to identify Bergen and Rockland county as ideal headquarters. 

We selected our current facility in Congers, NY. The office and warehouse sat on 19 acres, giving us confidence to grow all of our businesses. Today, this site continues to serves us well, though we've expanded to 3 additional operating facilities.

We just moved to a larger facility to accommodate future growth. At this juncture the team was offering service lines beyond indoor landscaping. John Mini cultivated a strategy to upscale and differentiate our holiday décor with intentions to grow this revenue line further. And, the team was dabbling in outdoor urbanscaping. 

It was time to change our name to represent the breadth of our team's work. John Mini, as always, poured his heart into this process, thinking through every angle. The result was a company name change from 'John Mini Indoor Landscapes' to 'John Mini Distinctive Landscape', a new company logo, and a refresh of all our brand elements such as our uniforms, vehicle wraps, business cards, and marketing materials.

John, in typical fashion, was ahead of the curve. The name change and our new colors modernized the company and stand the test of time. Integrating the word 'distinctive' into our name signaled our customer values. From day one, our team always strived to deliver a distinctive experience and product. 

Our new colors, blue and green, were embraced by the John Mini team. And, these colors positioned us as trend setters for other service businesses. In following years, competitors and service businesses adopted similar hues of blue into their logos and uniforms.

Entering the new Millennium, John Mini continued to grow not only in the Indoor Landscaping arena, but also with our Outdoor Urbanscaping and Holiday décor projects.

Throughout the decade we earned 46 awards, which brought our company's running total to over 100 National Industry Awards.

These awards included a diverse mix of institutional, hospitality, community based, corporate and retail projects.

At the point of planting, this was the largest indoor landscape installation in the nation dollar wise. 

The installation took over six months to complete. Over fifty specimen trees along with thousands of flowering plants and tropical ground cover were selected. The trees provided an exciting challenge. The task was to find tall trees with 'older' characteristics. These trees were the foundation of the planting that achieved an established rainforest aesthetic upon install rather than a newly planted landscape.  

We were contracted through Tishman/Speyer for the install and then worked directly with Borgata for maintenance and flower programs. The installation received the highest accolades in the country for that year. 

Based on our excellent reputation providing the highest level of indoor landscaping, we regularly received requests from our clients to help with their outdoor spaces. In 2008 we made the full commitment to invest in a dedicated Outdoor Department. This included recruiting the best people, implementing the right equipment and reshaping the expectations of what Urbanscaping means to the city of New York.

Acting as the focal point of the first LEED Platinum skyscraper built in New York City in 2009, the Urban Garden Room at 1 Bryant Park provides a public space of respite and relaxation amongst the hustle and bustle of mid-town Manhattan. 

Owned and developed and by the Durst Organization, the biophilic elements of the Urban Garden Room represent their commitment to sustainability and nature in New York City. These three-dimensional sculptures, some as high as 30+ feet high, incorporate over 35,000 individual plantings. 

Based on our cherished relationship, John Mini was brought in to consult on the project to determine the most sustainable plant varieties and maintenance regiments to keep the sculptures in peak condition. We've had the honor of maintaining this space for the past thirteen years.

On October 29th, 2012, Superstorm Sandy made landfall in the Tri-State area. This was one of the most destructive storms to hit the area. Major storm surges caused significant flooding throughout the tunnels and subway systems of the city. Neighborhoods that were located closest to waterways suffered significant damage.

Many commercial and residential properties were without power for days to weeks, causing humanitarian and operational challenges that impacted certain parts of the city for months. We came together to support each other and persevere. 

The John Mini team from headquarters, which was without power for weeks, and field-based teams put our value of 'Be Resourceful and Solve Problem' to the test. Day in and day out the team worked together to continue operations and support our clients in impacted areas.

In 2013 John Mini was inducted to the Plantscape Hall of Fame.

The Plantscape Hall of Fame honors individuals that have provided leadership and contributed immensely to the growth of the interior plantscape industry. 

All nominees and inductees must have contributed a minimum of 15 years of contributions to the interiorscape industry.

In 2002 Jack Harris joined the company. Prior to joining John Mini, Jack had managed one of the largest indoor landscaping operations in the world, both nationally and internationally. He was a proven leader.

As partners, Jack worked alongside John in the role of Vice President sharing the knowledge and expertise he had garnered throughout his decades of experience in the industry. 

He took over as President of the company in 2013 and led the team in this role for over 8 years. During each year as President, the business earned revenue growth. And, the team secured and executed some of our company's most cutting-edge projects to date. 

John Mini was a National indoor award winner for installing and maintaining the Palm Trees inside of Brookfield Place. 

With this unheralded reputation Brookfield awarded John Mini the opportunity to install and maintain its vast outdoor space. John Mini did not let its customer down. 

In 2014, our outdoor award at Brookfield Place was honored with a Judges Award as the award committee for NALP selected the project as one of the top 3 projects in the Nation. Out of these 3 projects, our work was then voted as the best of the best. This was the fifth time our company received the top project honor across the nation.

Crossing in to our fifth decade, our team collaborated on a decade record of 63 National Award-winning projects.

As our capacity expanded outwards, we continued to look upwards. In particular, we mastered the art of vertical living wall (also know as green walls), large scale holiday displays and lush landscaped terraces and green roofs upon the highest skyscrapers in New York City.

Throughout the first four decades of our company's history, John Mini Distinctive Landscapes developed our reputation around our value of "Push the Limits and Dream Big". This is attributed to our willingness to take on the most complicated and seemingly impossible indoor landscape projects in the nation. As we continued to grow our Outdoor division, both business lines allowed us the opportunity to lean into these capabilities and invest in the structure of our full-fledged Projects Division. 

Today, our Projects Division project manages and executes some of our most complex site work.

The Lowline Lab project wins the International Plantscape Project of the Year award, the top honor.

To this day this project remains inspirational as it explored boundaries of horticulture, urban planning, lighting, architecture, community engagement and design. A multi-disciplinary team came together to cultivate a successful exhibit in which we blacked out an abandoned warehouse, piped in natural sunlight with innovative technology, and planted an interactive public garden. 

This project put two of our company’s timeless values on full display: 'Be passionate' and 'Push the limits and Dream big'. Our horticultural work at the lowline project sparked conversations around sciences and explored what the future of urban gardening may look like. In just 1.5 years hundreds of thousands of people visited this exhibit and community educational programs were developed with youth to explore science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM). 

In 2017 our Leadership Team collaborated on the John Mini 4mula, an important guide that we enable us to share our companywide progress with the entire company on a quarterly basis. After much deliberation, we agreed on the four most important metrics to track the health, sustainability and growth of the company;

• Impact on Nature
• Team Happiness
• Client Preservation
• Team Productivity

Every year we review our progress on these four indicators with objective measures and set annual goals. We continue to present this information with all teammates to better illustrate each teammate's impact on our company's purpose.

Overlooking the National September 11th Memorial in Lower Manhattan sits a one-acre elevated park. This space invites visitors to reflect on the impact and history of the area as they overlook the original site of the World Trade Center Towers. 

The elevated park hosts multiple planting beds that house trees, perennial plantings, and seasonal plantings. Unique to this park is a massive living wall on the north side which measures 336 feet long by 20 feet tall, making it one of the largest in the country.

The client searched for a landscape maintenance partner that could handle the park's complexities, while being able to navigate the logistics of maintaining a public space that hosts millions of visitors. Based on our reputation for this type of work, we were chosen to rise to the challenge.  We've had the honor of maintaining this important space since 2017 and received a top industry award for the maintenance and re-design of the living wall.

 In 2018, John Mini Distinctive Landscapes opened a satellite office and warehouse in Long Island City.

The office space was built with our values in mind. Office workstations were positioned in an open and flexible manner to further promote the value “collaborate relentlessly”. The aesthetics of the space were industrial and scrappy reflecting the value “Be resourceful”, while also nodding to our firm’s entrepreneurial roots. 

The attached warehouse was a game changer for the company’s operations, most notably our outdoor maintenance division. The warehouse collocated the division’s fleet of vehicles, team, supplies and equipment.

This space, situated minutes from Times Square and Grand Central transit stations, allowed us to better support our New York City customers. And, the location improved vehicle routing. At the time of the move, we forecasted a 30% reduction in fuel usage thanks to the new space.

Throughout our history, we've always prided ourselves on setting the trends of what you can expect from a landscape company. This is especially true in the way that we represent and market our brand. In 2019 we conducted a comprehensive brand refresh, analyzing all of our elements from digital, physical, and experiential. 

We landed on the three pillars of our Brand Identity: Passion, Sincerity, and Exploration. 

We poured through every aspect of our marketing to align with our brand update. Here's one example. We adjusted a company tagline slightly to: Let's Make Places Beautiful. This passed our brand test. The tagline continued to lean into the pillar of 'passion', while injecting more 'sincerity'. The tagline now spoke to our value to 'collaborate relentlessly', inviting our cherished customers into that process.

In March of 2020, New York City became the focal point of the COVID-19 pandemic spread. Hospitals overflowed, non-essential businesses were shut down, and restrictions were imposed on travel, events, and gatherings. 

As essential workers, our team showed up every single day to keep our community’s landscapes alive and safe preventing any image of urban decay. 

We faced unprecedented challenges and persevered in our “new normal” due to the dedication of the entire John Mini team, customers, and vendors. We came out of the pandemic stronger than ever with valuable lessons learned that we will carry with us for years to come. 

"Leaders aren't born they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal or any goal."

-Vince Lombardi

Mark Mini started working for John Mini on the trucks, installing plants at a young age. He learned the business from the ground up, taking pride in learning all aspects of the business by working alongside teammates in all divisions. 

In July of 2021, Mark took over the role as President.

While our company continued to expand the boundaries of our projects scale and complexity, we continued to add the types of scope of work we could provide to our clients. In 2022 we invested in a new department for the company – Fabrication. Andrew Coslow, a long-time collaborator, and his team partnered with John Mini to take these capabilities to the next level. 

Helmed by some of the most talented and creative minds in the industry, this division of John Mini is responsible for our custom fabrication . Multidisciplinary in our approach, we're able to provide custom woodwork, metal work, and a multitude of other offerings to our clients. Today, we are only scratching the surface of what we can achieve in this division.

As we enter our sixth decade, we have already amassed over 20 National Awards as a team. This includes some of the most groundbreaking architectural projects of the 21st Century. Expert Design, Installation, and Maintenance are well represented in the eclectic mix of Award Winners. 

Our business has evolved and grown for 50 years. One constant is that it is always about the people. Everyday, we met and collaborated with amazing people. People that inspire and encourage our best. This section is a tribute to all the people who supported and built John Mini, unfortunately too many to individually recognize. ​
To our teammates. You are the heartbeat of our company. We work hard to achieve. And every teammate, past and present, is a fabric of our woven legacy. Thank you for your passion and commitment. ​
To our partners. The nurseries, vendors, design collaborators, farms, architects, trade contractors and more. We challenge and support each other in our endeavor to deliver meaningful work. For these relationships, we are forever grateful.​
And to our clients. You have demanded our best, driving us to be distinctive. All clients, past and present, have afforded us the opportunity to make our passion our profession. We are eternally grateful for your business.​
Now, as we eye our next 50 years in business, we invite you into our journey. Let's make places beautiful, together.