5 Questions: Chase Mullin

Chase Mullin (Photo: LM Staff)

Chase Mullin

Mullin, New Orleans, La.

1.What can you tell me about Mullin?

Mullin is a well-rounded landscape company founded in 2007, performing bid-build and design build construction and residential and commercial maintenance. We’re based right outside of New Orleans, La., and service south Louisiana and coastal Mississippi.

2.How does your location make your work challenges unique?

Much of the work we do is in and around the city, which makes access a frequent obstacle to overcome. From figuring out how to park our trucks to install street trees at French Quarter hotels to coordinating pools and hardscaping in backyards with 3 feet of access, we’ve become pretty proficient at navigating tight access. Did I mention that we get more than 60 inches of rain every year?

3.When hiring people, what qualities do you look for?

One of our core values is “stay humble, be hungry” — it’s pretty easy to determine if a candidate embodies this core value fairly quickly during the interview process. Alignment with our core values is an absolute necessity. While we have an awesome team, we struggle with the same staffing concerns that plague the majority of the companies in our industry, and, in turn, we’re intentional about constantly promoting the career opportunities that we offer. We’ve made a commitment to not being too dependent on H-2B visas, so sourcing local labor is vital to sustain our rapid growth.

4.What was the last job you and your crew nailed, what was awesome about it and did you celebrate it?

The Sculpture Garden Expansion at New Orleans Museum of Art, which is a globally recognized 6.5-acre garden housing millions of dollars (worth) of unique sculptures. Our team installed more than 6,500 cubic yards of soil, nearly 50,000 plants and trees, more than an acre of sod and nearly 20,000 square feet of paver walkways, in addition to irrigating and draining the site. Absolutely, we celebrated! After a year on the project, we took the members of the project management team and their spouses to a celebratory dinner at GW Fins, one of the best local seafood restaurants. We also toured the site with our entire office staff, allowing them the opportunity to see what our team is capable of creating.

5. It was announced at Grow! 2020 that you and your company are hosting Grow! 2021. What are you looking forward to next year?

Words can’t even describe my excitement. Hosting Grow! has been a goal of mine for years, and I couldn’t be more proud to show off our incredible team and city to 500-plus landscape professionals next year! Our brand is really important to us, and I’m hopeful that this is made obvious by our facility, team members and trucks. I’m truly looking forward to the critique after the attendees visit, as well, as I’m sure that little details slip by us as we’re in the day to day of things — having all of those outside eyes looking in should be really insightful! The Grow Group made a great decision on location — can you think of many places better to head to for a “work trip” than New Orleans?!