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About Us:
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Mike McCleese graduated from Miami University of Ohio with a Bachelor of Arts degree in the social and biological sciences. After college, he served in the U.S. Peace Corps in the Central African Republic and began a career in social services. In the early 1990s, Mike discovered a dormant passion; plants and gardens.
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From that time forward he began a course of formal and informal study in horticulture and landscape design. Mike studied landscape horticulture at Cincinnati State College, and attended workshops and seminars around the country including design workshops with renowned British garden designer, Robin Templar Williams, Julie Moir Messervy, author of “Outside the Not So Big House”, and Mike Linn, founder of the Mike Linn Graphic Workshop.
Mike launched a A Guy & His Dog Landscaping, a design/build business in 1996.
Mike is a member of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD), the Ohio Nursery and Landscape Association (ONLA), and NOFA (Northeastern Organic Farmers Association – Organic Land Care Program). Mike recently earned accreditation with NOFA as an Organic Land Care Professional, the only such accredited landscape designer in Cincinnati. As a member of the APLD, Mike has toured and studied gardens throughout the U.S. and Europe. Current interests include stone and water in the garden. In the spring a 2008, Mike designed and built the garden, Imagine, at the Cincinnati Flower & Garden Show which won a silver medal for outstanding composition and design. (Link to photo of Imagine)
Mike is passionate about gardens, people, and dogs. In September of 2005, Mike travelled to New Orleans to participate in animal rescue with the organization Best Friends Animal Santuary. You can read about Mike's experiences in New Orleans and see a photo of him with a dog he rescued in the newly released book, Pawprints of Katrina by author Cathy Scott and photographer Clay Myers. (Link to review of book or to Amazon.com?) Also, in the Sping of 2009, Mike will appear in the premier of a new cable television series, Off the Chain, a reality TV show featuring the efforts of many canine lovers who will work with uninformed dog owners to relieve their pets from a life of lonliness and misery tied to the end of a chain or rope. Mike appears as the landscape designer who works with the canine stars to design and build them a 'dogscape' which will allow them to not only live off a chain, but have a place for shelter and a place to stretch and run a bit.
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Standards
of Operation:
Commitment to clients - A Guy & His Dog Landscaping commits to:
1. Provide detailed, individualized, professional landscape services to clients in Cincinnati and surrounding areas.
2. Embrace and practice design principles which reflect core elements for creating outdoor living spaces – unity, simplicity, scale, and function.
3. Provide the above services in a chemical-free environment. See more!
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Richard Tufnell, master stone mason from the United Kingdom has been crafting dry laid stone walls for over 30 years. Richard is an expert in the history and craft of not only stonewalling but the use of stone from pre- historic to modern times. From the oldest structures known to a rebirth in modern landscaping, dry stone encompasses most of human history, including engineering, archaeology, geology, ancient landscapes, rural employment and third world development.
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The USA, particularly areas in central Kentucky, has a substantial dry stone heritage that is very little known, even among those that are in charge of preserving the past. A past winner of the BBC's Small Rural Business Award and Rolex Award for the Environment,
Richard has given numerous lectures, including at the National Building Museum, and has been involved with dry stone in more than forty countries. He has also worked with a number of US National Parks, State Parks, and was awarded the keys to Lexington, Kentucky, for his role in reviving the craft and for co-founding the Dry Stone Conservancy. He has written many newspaper and journal articles, appeared on national TV in a number of countries. Richard and his wife Amanda recently moved to a small village in the south of France where they are restoring an 18th century stone farm house.
Mike met Richard at a dry stone walling workshop at the Pine Mountain School in Southern Kentucky. It has been Mike's good fortune that Richard continues to come to Cincinnati from his home in Southern France to supervise and construct some of the most beautiful stone walls ever built in this region of the Midwest.
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Mark Anderson has been building cutting edge hardscapes in the Cincinnati area for over 20 years. In April, 2000 Mark founded and became president of Greystone Landscape Construction. Mark studied landscape design and construction at Cincinnati State & Technical College and was awarded a degree in Landscape Horticulture in 1982.
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Before starting Greystone, Mark worked for years as a contracted project manager and facilities grounds keeper at the Proctor and Gamble Company. While working at Proctor and Gamble, Mark supervised the installation and maintenance of commercial landscapes.
Next Mark worked as a design/sales professional and hardscape crew chief for Earthscapes Nursery. At Earthscapes, Mark committed himself to mastering the more intimate, artistic details of constructing residential hardscapes. Mark approaches his work as a craftsman. The unique beauty of every custom designed hardscape depends on the skilled hands putting it together. To compliment his artistry as a craftsman, Mark brings some of the best carpenters, masons, and electrical/mechanical workers in the area to his projects.
Mark is an asset to the design build community in Cincinnati and Mike is pleased to work collaboratively with him to achieve the highest standards when installing his designed garden plans.
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Last, but certainly not least are Gabe and Sonny, Mike’s Labrador retrievers. Gabe and Sonny have no real horticultural skills but as full business partners they do reserve the right to ride up front in the trucks and boss everyone around! Gabe and Sonny spend their days travelling about the Cincinnati area making canine friends wherever they go. On occaision they have been known to befriend a cat or two but this is not a regular occurance!
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