Although North Carolina's Thorpe Landscapes has served the region for the past 15 years, it remains a youthful, yet experienced company made up of a team of talented individuals.
Dan Thorpe opened the landscaping firm in 2011 in Wilmington, located on the state's southeastern coast. A native of Pennsylvania, he had earlier graduated from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington before serving a two-year commitment with AmeriCorps and the Philadelphia Teaching Fellows. While living in Philadelphia, Thorpe also earned his master's degree in education from Chestnut Hill College.
As his company grew, Thorpe wanted to better understand business, which led him to earn his MBA from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"We started doing landscape maintenance in the summers when I was not teaching in Philadelphia," he said recently at the site of a stream restoration project in the town of Wake Forest, just north of Raleigh. "We did some work for a great lady who managed an apartment complex, and she said, ‘You know, if you really start something significant, we'd let you bid on some of our projects.' That led us to start an LLC and bid on some work. Pretty soon, we started getting a few."
As is the case with many successful start-ups, Thorpe was able to grow his business from that one small kernel. In the beginning, the work consisted of simple yard mowing, edging, string trimming and leaf blowing.
"We also did some hardscape projects before getting into some larger land development with grading and excavation, and it kind of just went from there," Thorpe said. "There were 15 years of growth in that 15-second answer. It was certainly a process."
Thorpe Landscapes's path to success also included working hard to become fully educated and certified to run a knowledgeable landscaping operation. Dan Thorpe obtained his licenses to become both a landscape contractor and a general contractor, the latter of which allows him to work on a variety of building jobs.
"Then we started taking stream restoration courses and got those certifications before moving on to secure the next set of certifications," he said, "and as we did so, we got better at what we were doing."
Eventually, all that effort paid off handsomely. Today, Thorpe Landscapes is recognized throughout the Tarheel State — as well as other neighboring areas of the South — for its range of services, its expert team of professionals and environmentally friendly and sustainable designs.
Among the services it provides are residential and commercial maintenance, hardscapes, excavation and site work, drainage, and historical, hurricane,\ and stream restoration, in addition to several types of lawncare work.
The company flourished to the point that Thorpe later opened a second location in Asheville on the opposite end of the state. Although he primarily works from his base in Wilmington, Thorpe said he splits his time between the two offices and supervises jobs at various points in between.
Stream Restoration Displays Thorpe's Expertise
The expertise includes the restoration work in Wake Forest, which he described more precisely as a stream bank stabilization.
"We're restoring the stream to where it once was, so it doesn't impact nearby commercial and residential developments," Thorpe said. "We're taking that stream back to a safe place so that it can handle significant storm events when they come through — like hurricanes.
"By stabilizing the bank, we're making certain it doesn't erode the back of these three houses," he added while pointing to an adjacent development.
Thorpe noted that the creek's reach is only approximately 300 ft.
"That is the length from where we're starting to where we end, but it's a very technical 300 feet," he said. "There are a lot of key measurements that need to happen and several important structures that need to go in to protect the backs of these three houses."
Among them are the installation of three or four boulder sills in the waterway. Together, they form a boulder wall that allows the water to come over its top and down into a pool.
Once the water's energy is dissipated in that pool, he said, it then flows down a riffle (created by the combination of rocks and shallow, rushing water) before going slightly uphill to another boulder sill. From there, the stream falls off to another pool — a process that continues to repeat itself.
"It is all designed as a way to slow down the energy of the water, so it doesn't come rushing through and entrench the creek," according to Thorpe.
He and his crew began the Wake Forest project in the third week of September, and he anticipates the work will last 90 to 120 days.
"We'll finish somewhere in the middle of December, depending on the weather," Thorpe said.
James River Equipment Fulfills Thorpe's Needs
To get the machines it requires for its various projects, Thorpe Landscapes depends heavily on James River Equipment, specifically its dealerships in Asheville and Wilmington. The company has locations across North Carolina and Virginia that serve customers who need equipment for construction, forestry, turf and agricultural work.
Thorpe has called on the equipment distributor to acquire several of its John Deere excavators, most of which are compact models.
"When we started out, our first machine was a John Deere 26G excavator, the smallest machine that John Deere made, before we began to move up in size," he said. "Later, we got a model 35G — we now have two of them — then we went to the 50Gs. Eventually, we acquired the model 85Ps and 135Us, which is our largest. We just like to keep adding more tools to our toolbox."
In addition, through 4 Rivers Equipment, a James River sister company located in the Rocky Mountain states, Thorpe Landscapes recently acquired a Topcon HiPer XR base and rover, a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver engineered to work in survey applications, including property boundaries, engineering design, and cadastral projects.
Because the versatile tool also is often used for construction site layout/stakeout, grade checking and material volume calculations, the HiPer XR unit has proved to be a perfect fit for Thorpe Landscapes.
"James River trained us on using the Topcon base and rover, but this model is specifically important for this stream bank stabilization project because of the tolerances for our elevation and our structures," according to Thorpe. "Everything must be within one-eighth of an inch. This base allows us to rove around the site and check our grades so we can put a tack on anything. It allows us to talk with the operator and cut here or fill here, and it's just a great way to be able to grade the site in real time."
If Thorpe Landscapes had not purchased the Topcon HiPer XR, he said, the same set of tasks at the Wake Forest site would take his crew 100 times longer to complete.
"That's because we would have to hire surveyors to come out to shoot shots, determine where our grade is, see if we're close or not and find out how much we need to fill and how much we need to cut. In the more than two months since we have been using it, the Topcon base and rover have simply been amazing."
Cape Hatteras Project Tests Thorpe's Mettle
Thorpe said that almost all the company's projects present their own specific problems and intricacies.
That includes its work at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse on North Carolina's Outer Banks, among Thorpe's highest-profile projects. Until recently, the company had team members at the remote National Park Service (NPS) site on Hatteras Island beginning in 2024 to perform a landscape restoration that also included installing new concrete sidewalks.
"Everyone has since demobilized for the rest of the year because they are trying to figure out some next steps for the lighthouse," Thorpe said in September. "All of the contractors should be going back there to work next spring, though."
Thorpe Landscapes serves as a subcontractor for a larger effort to completely restore the 155-year-old lighthouse, the tallest of its kind in the United States.
Twenty-six years ago, in a Herculean effort, the 210-ft.-tall structure was moved back 2,900 ft. from the encroaching Atlantic Ocean when it had been just 15 ft. from the churning surf. Only recently, though, has the NPS contracted to have the grounds and the lighthouse itself restored.
"We just planted 12,000 native grasses around the grounds," Thorpe said. "Now, the lighthouse, the principal keeper's quarters and the museum all look like they had never been moved."
He added that the new grass effectively prevents erosion from occurring, and by re-grading the entire site, Thorpe created dunes and several other natural features. In addition, the company put in all new concrete sidewalks.
To perform all the grading and earthwork, and install the hardscapes, pavers, concrete and walkways around the lighthouse site, Thorpe Landscapes has so far had to bring in 120 truckloads of native sand equaling 3,000 cu. yds.
Most of that material came from a local source that was dredged from a site approximately 30 minutes north of the lighthouse.
"We used it to build up all the sand dunes five to six feet across the entire site," he said. "The existing sidewalks were way too low and had flooded, so we raised up everything."
Since the Outer Banks — and Hatteras Island, specifically — are in an isolated locale far from North Carolina's mainland, Thorpe added that various factors out there can sometimes waylay the best-laid plans. That includes sourcing the materials needed for a construction site on the coastal lands.
One problem that repeatedly occurs is storm damage to N.C. Highway 12, the only major roadway on the thin strip of barrier islands. To reach the lighthouse means traversing the highway for more than 50 mi, from Nags Head south to Cape Hatteras.
However, most of Thorpe's materials for the job must be trucked to Nags Head via U.S. 64 from sources on the mainland that are at least a few hours away from the beach community, he said.
"Our closest Vulcan quarry was four or five hours away, and our closest concrete plant was two hours away, so we are just at the limits of when we can get and use material," Thorpe said. "The logistics are challenging, and it is so weather dependent. If we're not working that day because a storm is coming in or a section of the highway is shut down, we're just sitting there waiting for the weather to break." CEG
