Beach Landscaping

by Melissa LaScaleia

Matt Freedman, the owner of Beach Landscaping in Myrtle Beach, is originally from the Washington, D.C. area. After relocating to Myrtle Beach, Matt and his father, Bob, started a commercial cleaning business. After nurturing it successfully over the years, Matt was looking for a new challenge. 

In 2000, he and his father teamed up with a partner to start a landscaping business; in 2010, they separated from their partner, and have been running the company together, as Beach Landscaping, ever since. 

“I didn’t have much landscaping experience when I first started,” Matt says, “and neither did our business partner. I basically learned on the job, through hands-on doing it. 

“One of the reasons why we were able to get business from the onset was that we called people back and followed through with what we said we were going to do. It was basically our customer service, and we stick with that to this day. 

“It’s huge for people that we’re here and we’re accountable for what we provide. People continue to be amazed that we actually return their calls.” 

Beach Landscaping has since grown from its humble origins, but remains a true family owned and operated business. Matt and Bob spearhead the operation, and Matt’s wife Tracy manages the accounting and scheduling. 

Since those early days, Matt has learned a lot about plants and landscaping— investing in formal education, attending classes, and logging hours in the study of plant identification, pesticide application, and weed identification and control. The trio oversees a team of about twenty employees. 

“We try to maintain as much communication with our clients as we can,” he says in speaking about what makes his company stand out. “Rich is instrumental to our team— he follows up behind our grounds crew to make sure they’re doing everything according to our standards. We have a lot of old-time customers at this point, and we take care of them. 

“We have a lot of different avenues and infrastructure in place so that when people call, they have access to someone on our team who is there for them, to listen and assist them quickly and easily. If there’s a conflict, Rich is the one that we send to go talk to the homeowners to understand the problem and make things right. Our team is pretty stable; that just helps to make us more effective because we are familiar working with one another.” 

Today, Beach Landscaping offers numerous landscaping services for both businesses and residences: regular lawn mowing and maintenance services; bed design, planting, and maintenance; bush, perennial, palm and other tree pruning services; full landscape design; and irrigation installation and servicing. 

They also cover you and your yard for spring and fall cleanup, overturn soil, give recommendations on what plants would thrive in specific areas of your yard, and conduct soil testing and treatment for lawns that need more perk. The only thing they don’t do is take down large trees. 

Beach Landscaping also offers design and execution for hardscapes, paver patios and walkways, and retaining walls. These latter skills evolved over time, Matt explains, as along the way, they hired and met individuals who were skilled in these additional areas, until Matt and his father were able to expand their repertoire of offerings on their own. 

Their ability to successfully teach themselves new skills, and consistently offer excellent services with great attention to customers is both impressive and inspiring.    

“In the last year, there’s been a lot of growth in our company,” Matt says. “We’ve become better organized all around, and we’re expanding a lot of our hardscape offerings. We’ve purchased new lawn care equipment and are more effective in our lawn care maintenance as a result.”   

Matt’s favorite thing about his job is doing a complete landscape redesign for a customer. “I enjoy have a clean palate to work from, going in and having everything new from the beginning,” he says. 

With spring right around the corner, now is the time to clean up your yard. Beach Landscaping offers spring clean-ups— they clean up leaves, branches, debris, prune shrubs and trees, cut back Crepe Myrtles, and ornamental grasses, and generally put your yard in order. 

“If you’re a regular customer, we don’t need to come in and do a big clean-up because we’ve been doing it all along,” Matt says. “But a lot of people let things go all winter long and need more service.” 

And for those who prefer to do things on their own, Beach Landscaping has begun to put together a series of informational videos so people can educate themselves about how to properly take care of their yard and lawn.

“Our first video was on recognizing lawn disease and treating it,” Matt says. “We also created one on the scale insects that affect trees and shrubs—how to identify them and what to do about them. Each video is about 2-3 minutes long, and includes things that people can do to help themselves with these issues.” 

Coming up, their next video will include information on how to prep your yard for spring by cutting back perennials and pruning Crepe Myrtles. The videos come out every other month or so and are posted on their Facebook page.