Darin Brockelbank did not get into landscaping for love of plants. I was a poor kid and I had to do something to make money to have extra things, he told Total Landscape Care. So at ten he raked leaves. At twelve he had grass-cutting accounts. At fourteen he launched a business officially, and called it Darin’s Lawn Care.
The company is MetroGreenscape now, one of the larger residential landscaping and outdoor living firms in Charlotte, with more than 250 five-star reviews and a motto its president chose to make a point: everything outdoorzy.
It started with a rake
Brockelbank ran Darin’s Lawn Care through his teens and into adulthood, and the rename came after he married. He wanted to think bigger, he said, and to give the company a name that was forward-thinking, and the couple eventually settled on MetroGreenscape. The motto followed for the same reason: he wanted customers to know the company could do anything outdoors, and the outdoors is a lot of different services.
The business shifted over the years from maintenance toward design and build. When the trade magazine profiled it in 2020, about 21 percent of the work was maintenance and the rest was installation, and Brockelbank said 65 to 70 percent of projects did not start with a formal design at all, because designing slows things down. He prefers residential work, he said, because the attention to detail is higher.
The 2020 profile was about recessions, and the company’s preparation for them. Brockelbank had lived through 2008 with a landscaping business and built the company to survive the next one, which arrived that spring.
The rename came with a change in ambition. Darin’s Lawn Care described a teenager with accounts; MetroGreenscape described a company that intended to serve a metropolitan area, and the motto that followed was meant to head off the question of what it did not do. Brockelbank’s own account of the early years is unsentimental: the work was a way to have the things a poor kid could not otherwise afford, and the entrepreneurial instinct came before any interest in plants.
The man behind it
Brockelbank is president, and the company’s stated values run in both English and Spanish on its website, a detail that says who does the work: servanthood through actions, ownership through empowerment, balance through unity, innovation through adaptability, growth through transparency and greatness through commitment. The company says it regularly requests feedback and audits its own work, and the review count suggests the audits are read.
The firm describes its view of a yard in terms of what happens in it. Front lawns are landing pads for cartwheels, its site says. Custom pools are the ultimate staycation. Backyard patios are the party setting and outdoor fireplaces are a romantic getaway for parents. The business, in its own words, is about creating spaces that inspire connection and help families spend time together, and then maintaining them so the family can.
The company’s recession planning, which Total Landscape Care profiled in the spring of 2020, came from experience. Brockelbank had run a landscaping company through 2008 and built MetroGreenscape to survive the next downturn with a mix of maintenance contracts, which pay in bad years, and design-build work, which pays in good ones. The lead sources he named were unglamorous: Facebook marketing, search advertising and referrals.
What you actually get
MetroGreenscape is a turnkey design-build firm: custom swimming pools and pool houses, paver patios, outdoor kitchens and fireplaces, pergolas, composite decks, retaining walls and drainage, alongside the landscape design, planting and lawn care that started it. The company’s landscape architects perform on-site inspections for clients with annual service contracts, checking plant health, turf problems and irrigation, and its horticulturists write treatment plans for the roses that wilt and the cherry trees that stop blooming.
The process is a consultation, a site inspection with the outdoor structure team, a design where one is needed and the build. The company works across Charlotte and into the suburbs, with a stated minimum project size for its larger design-build work, and it lists a team member profile and a Concord service page that suggest the footprint has grown with the region.
The service list has grown toward the expensive end of outdoor living as south Charlotte has: custom pools with pool houses, outdoor kitchens with fireplaces and pergolas, composite decks and the drainage and retaining-wall work that Charlotte’s clay and slopes demand. Maintenance clients get the horticulturists’ inspections and treatment plans, and the company’s Spanish-and-English core values reflect a crew the company says it hires and keeps instead of subcontracts. The review count, more than 250 five-star ratings by its own tally, is the metric it advertises.
Why it matters
Charlotte’s landscaping industry is full of companies that started with one person and a mower, and most of them stay that size or vanish. MetroGreenscape is the one that scaled: from a fourteen-year-old’s accounts to a design-build firm that installs the pools in the south Charlotte backyards where the city’s growth is most visible.
Brockelbank’s own summary is that the company was built on thoughtful landscape design and on preparing for the downturn before it comes. The kid who raked leaves for extra things now employs the people who build the outdoor rooms Charlotte families are photographed in. Everything outdoorzy, it turns out, was a plan.