Associations

The National Association of Landscape Professionals (NALP) is a national trade association representing 100,000 landscape industry professionals in the US, with additional members in Canada and overseas. Members of NALP specialize in lawn care, landscape design and installation, landscape maintenance, tree care, irrigation and water management, and interior plantscaping. 

NALP is the only national organization built by the collaboration of landscape and lawn care industry professionals and is committed to helping members achieve success through the following areas:

• Education- With a platform for growth founded on educational resources and peer-to-peer sharing on a national scale, members are provided with invaluable access to the best ideas and practices in the landscape industry. 
• Advocacy- With deep relationships with legislators and policymakers, NALP is the voice of members and the industry amid an increasingly challenging regulatory environment. 
• Professionalism- With a focus on professionalism that is establishing the highest standard in the industry, NALP is driving consumer preference for members’ services. The association administers the Landscape Industry Certified designation which is a benchmark for educational achievement for lawn care and landscape professionals.

The National Hispanic Landscape Alliance (NHLA) is the result of an awakening among Hispanic-American landscape industry professionals to the importance and benefits of collective effort in protecting and advancing our interests. The NHLA seeks to inform, encourage and support its members so that they can become highly successful professionals, better-engaged leaders and more effective advocates.

In the words of their president Chuy Medrano, “It was time. We had built a foundation for success through hard work and learning the business basics, but to take the next step we had to take a wider view, we had to look beyond what we were doing. We also had to look closer at ourselves. As we did that, we could better see opportunities and threats, and our strengths and weaknesses came into better focus too. As some of us started sharing more, we realized that we could help each other. It started there. Over the last few years there had been some efforts here and there, but there wasn’t anything keeping it going until we formed the NHLA."

Learn more about NHLA >

The Professional Grounds Management Society (PGMS^®) is an individual membership society of grounds professionals advancing the grounds management profession through education and professional development. PGMS was officially created in 1911 but the nucleus of the organization began as the National Association of Gardeners in suburban New York and New Jersey in 1905.

In 1911 all institutional grounds managers were invited to join the organization. Since then, broadening of the Society has continued under two influences:

• The unique core of the Society would be the institutional grounds professional generalist.
• The organization would remain a professional society for the individual (rather than a trade association).

The majority of PGMS members are institutional grounds managers who work for organizations such as colleges and universities, municipalities, park and recreation facilities, office parks, apartment complexes, hotels/motels, cemeteries, theme parks, etc. In addition, many independent landscape contractors are also in membership. All have joined together for the purpose of education and economic advancement.

The society defines a grounds manager as a member of a management team responsible for the operation and maintenance of a site or sites. The grounds manager is responsible for the management of staff, money, materials and equipment utilized in maintaining and enhancing a landscaped site including turf, trees, woody ornamentals and flowers, outdoor structure and related facilities. This can include areas such as roads, sidewalks, parking lots maintenance and repair (including snow removal).

The ultimate goals are to assist the individual manager in developing techniques and management skills to assure an outstanding grounds management program for his or her organization, clients or employers and upgrade the level of the profession.

BuyBoard^® provides school districts with an opportunity to save time and money while purchasing the products you use every day. Through collaboration between the National School Boards Association (NSBA) and several State School Boards Associations, school districts (and other governmental entities-eligible governmental entities include: Cities, Municipalities, Towns, Villages, Counties, Community Colleges, Public Universities and Other Local Government Agencies) can benefit from BuyBoard which was developed to comply with state laws which require government entities to make purchases from an approved list of vendors who have gone through a competitive bidding process.

The BuyBoard competitive bidding process gives districts the advantage of leveraging the cooperative’s ability to get volume discounts and combines it with the ease of online, web-based shopping and ordering. Districts that qualify can use BuyBoard to purchase everything from pencils to relocatable classrooms and everything in between.

The Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) - the nation’s oldest and largest institute dedicated to improving environmental quality through property rights and markets.

Founded in 1980 by a handful of outdoor-oriented economists in Bozeman, Montana, PERC is a conservation and research institute dedicated to free market environmentalism. Their research examines how markets encourage cooperation instead of conflict over natural resources and how property rights make the environment an asset by giving owners incentives for stewardship. Together, they improve environmental quality.

By applying these lessons to environmental policy, they envision a culture of creative conservation and environmental entrepreneurship replacing the often ineffective and acrimonious political culture.

PERC is dedicated to working with conservationists, policymakers, scholars and journalists to understand the root of environmental conflict and move toward innovative solutions. Their research, workshops and fellowships strive to replace rhetoric with results and conflict with cooperation to be better stewards of the environment.

Ferris mowers are the official mowers of Richard Childress Racing (RCR^®). Founded in 1969, RCR is one of the largest and most storied organizations in NASCAR competition. RCR currently fields two teams in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series and three teams in the NASCAR XFINITY Series.

Throughout their history, RCR has accumulated a total of 17 championships and more than 200 victories across NASCAR’s top three series, including three Daytona 500 wins (1998, 2007, 2018) and three Brickyard 400 victories (1995, 2003, 2011) two of the sport’s crown jewels of competition. RCR was the first organization in NASCAR history to win championships across all three national touring series.