Check Out Joseph Reynolds’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Joseph Reynolds

Hi Joseph, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I went to NC State at 18. I already had about a year and half of college done because I started community college in my hometown of Advance near Winston-Salem at 16. I rushed through and graduated with a business degree before my 21st birthday. Somewhere in the midst of it I discovered a powerful interest in the human ability to grow plants. I was fascinated by our ability to control these simple lifeforms to provide for us exactly what we need or want from them. I would have stayed longer at NC State to pursue horticulture, but college is expensive. I took my business degree, and relatively low student debt, and started working as a corporate recruiter. Within months I burned out and was fired from my job along with the other members of my department. However positive I was during this time; it was a pretty major low point in my life. I was delivering pizzas every night, hoping to have enough money in tips to pay rent at the end of each month. I knew I wanted a job that worked with plants, I had started gardening in the cheapest way possible but I couldn’t help but fantasize about a job in the realm of my growing passion for plants. I scoured the internet for opportunities but for most I was underqualified, or simply was turned away. It felt like something divine intervened when I discovered a job posting for a Sales representative at Pender Nursery. I knew I HAD to have this job. Pender Nursery is a wholesale nursery with a long history in the Raleigh area. They grow mostly ornamental plants on 60 acres in Garner. I studied the plants on their website more closely and intently than any for any exam. I came to the interview fervent and passionate. They gave me the job. In that time, my knowledge for plants and horticulture, exploded. I attended my duties first to meet our clients, build relationships, and grow our market share in my territory, but any space in between, I was studying plants and horticulture. I had an incredible new friend and mentor at work, Doug Wright, who imparted decades of experience to me. Through Instagram, I met another close friend and mentor during that time, Brandon Huber, who finishing his PhD in plant anatomy at NC State. I remember hanging out with him until 2am in the morning, digging through taxonomic relationships in carnivorous plants, for fun. It was refreshing that my hobby, passion and my job had so much overlap.

I rented a truly tiny room in a house with three other young adults on Marble Street in south Raleigh. The rent was super cheap, and there was a huge backyard with black walnut and pecans trees. I grew plants that are tolerant to those trees, that wage war on other plants with natural herbicidal chemicals they produce, in botany speak this is called allelopathy. I had good success with some plants and I was able to sell some of the gallon pots I produced to Pender Nursery, to re-wholesale. I called it Marble Botanics, I wanted to start an online retail shop to sell plants from, and I had a myriad of other business ideas with plants as well. Another spiking passion during that time was for houseplants. I fit as many as I could get into our little shared space and began experimenting with artificial lighting to grow houseplants in dark areas of the house. I didn’t own the outside space so investing in a garden that would never be mine seemed disheartening. Houseplants, I could take with me anywhere I went.

In the summer of 2019 I left Pender Nursery, not because I disliked my job but because I got an offer in a sales position for a packaging company for almost twice my salary. I couldn’t refuse, I thought it wouldn’t matter much because in my personal life I could still pursue my interests and I would have the financial means to do so. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Four months in, I was plotting my exit, and I thought that I could sell houseplants and interior plant services to businesses, under the name Marble Botanics. I set out and essentially went door to door to business who thought might be interested in the benefit of interior plants. This was February of 2020. As some opportunities in the space began to arise, all my targeted clients (restaurants, hotels, leasing offices, coffee shops) closed their doors as the covid-19 pandemic descended upon us. Immediately I pivoted into landscaping. Armed with nothing but a shovel a rake and a station wagon, I started offering planting and landscaping services, doing anything I could for people who wanted to improve their outdoor spaces. I needed employees and I was resolute on paying them $20/hour minimum, as I remember times when I felt underpaid. It was a struggle, and I learned faster what it meant to be a good contractor, boss and tradesman. Little by little my business grew. Covid-19 may have faltered the original business plan I sought out to execute but it created a big boom in home gardening and landscape improvements. People were stuck at home, and the economy and house values were growing so they had the extra funds in many cases to make improvements around their houses. I was met with many clients who were impressed with my knowledge for plants and found my horticultural prowess relieving compared to many landscapers who lacked the depth and skills in this area. I began taking on projects out of my depths, like building patios and retaining walls, which I learned as I went with the help of my close childhood friend and engineer, Jacob Thomas, who had recently moved back to Raleigh. He gave me the confidence to learn how to do anything, and do it well.

Along the way I began to see how conventional landscape practices were harming nature. So steadily I shifted our focus to providing services that helped our local ecology rather than harming it, while keeping our clients priorities for their spaces at the front of every project we performed. It was an uphill climb and every time I did something new, I didn’t make money on it, I was paid in experience. The tools, work vehicles, garden maintenance contracts and skills began to accumulate. Along the way I got married in the summer of 2020, my son Henry Leaf was born in September 2021. Many people suffered or were bored from the pandemic, but I was busier than I had ever been in my life. My year of suffering came in 2022. My mother-in-law passed away due to a rare auto-immune disease that presented suddenly, quickly ravaging her body and shutting down her liver in January. My grieving wife with our young baby then also lost her close friend and co-teacher to cancer that summer. In December of 2022 my dearest friend Jacob Thomas came over to our house for dinner after a Hurricanes game. I didn’t tell him that night that I never would have made it this far with Marble Botanics without him, but I hope he knew it. The next day he rode his motorcycle to the plant where he worked as an electrical engineer. On his way home, an older woman made a left turn in her minivan, directly in front him and he died in the collision. There is little rest for a small business owner, especially with employees depending on my performance to keep the company going. I am still devastated. Yet we continued to do great projects for our clients. Continued to learn. Continued to refine. Continued to work towards our mission of helping nature thrive.

Now in 2025, I can say we are best we have ever been. I have my team to thank for most of that: Graham Smith, Cormac Holland, Reece Neiderer, Samantha Sherman and Alexio Lascaster. Recently we have restructured the business to pay out 75% of all profits to our employees. We have everything we need right now, and I am comfortable at the size we are operating. We are safe, honest, delighting our clients, committed to being organic, and always favoring planting native plants. I know the best place to change the world is in our own backyard. Marble Botanics will forever strive to be the best landscape/garden contractor for the world, here at home.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
See the previous submission (last few paragraphs)

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
There are a lot of landscapers but that is a great spectrum. I fall somewhere off of it entirely. I always favor ecologically focused implementation when approaching and landscaping project. When it comes to plants, I am going to curate and favor site specific plant material that benefits pollinators and wildlife always. I want to see how a home garden or landscape can improve our environment, not take away from it, while still always meeting my clients needs and wants for their space. Stripping away fallen leaves and having perfect lawn grass is not my M.O. If a client wants a polished and formal landscape, I will find a way to achieve that while bolstering local ecology and healing the land. If they want a landscape that’s a bit more wild, even better! We as a species have done a lot of damage, it is my goal to create beautiful useful spaces we can enjoy that are restorative, not only for my clients’ and their guests, but for the Earth, right here in the Triangle.

What are your plans for the future?
I am very excited we have restructured our business so all financial gain or success we achieve goes to our employees. 75% of all company profits are paid to our full-time gardeners. Ultimately they are doing the work and they add tremendous value to our organization and our clients. I don’t want to grow Marble Botanics into a huge company, I want to be big in quality, the delight of our clients, and healing of nature.

Pricing:

• Labor (including transit) is $65 per gardener hour
• Consult or estimating fees usually run about $100
• Weekly Garden Maintenance is $270-$480 per month
• All materials are charged fairly at market prices
• We look for practices that are both economical AND eco-friendly (there is often a lot of overlap)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://marblebotanics.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marblebotanics/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marblebotanics/