I started in 1981. Back then, lawn care was simple: fertilize, spray, repeat. I followed the playbook—synthetic fertilizers, broad-spectrum pesticides, the whole “brute force” routine. I built a business. I made lawns green. I got results.
But I also got sick. The updrafts around homes coated me in organophosphates and carbamates. Dilated pupils, dizziness, headaches. I had to detox to function. When my daughter was born in 2001 and my son in 2004, I stopped spraying my own yard. I became a hypocrite—applying chemicals to other families’ lawns while protecting my own kids. That contradiction haunted me.
In 2015, I fully committed to regenerative. I left the old way behind. Today, 45 years in, my son Austin (dual degrees in Agriculture & Environmental Science from Trent University) and I work side-by-side. We’re not guessing. We’re measuring—fungal-to-bacterial ratios, compaction (PSI), Brix, EC, real-time nutrient absorption with our epifluorescence microscope. No other company in our area does this. They rely on 1850s NPK theory and WWII-era chemical thinking. We use 2026 science.
Conventional lawn care is simple because it’s lazy. Fertilize fast, spray to kill, measure success by the visual field. If it’s green and growing quick, it “works.” But insects, disease, drought stress, compaction, brown summers, silver-black lawns after applications—these are all outcomes of that approach. They’re symptoms of dead dirt, not random problems to fix with more poison.
People jump from company to company expecting different results, chasing the same old promise. That’s the definition of insanity. We’re still here because we do it differently. We build soil health. We measure. We adapt. And our lawns prove it—resilient, deep-rooted, alive.
If you’re tired of the old cycle, if you want to know how soil health really works, ask me. 45 years, boots on the ground, still learning, still changing, still here
#AwakenSoil #Stangls #Niagara #RegenerativeLawn #EcoSafe