GRL Consulting

GRL stands for Grassroot Landscaping, which is a landscaping maintenance company that has been active on Staten Island since about 2005. We focus on nature-friendly practices, avoiding industrial fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides and aiming to minimize our fuel consumption by using battery powered cargo bicycles and power tools whenever possible.

Lars Mayer, Grassroot’s owner, immigrated from Germany and settled on Staten Island in 2000. Lars hails from a long line of gardeners and landscapers on both sides of the family. His father was the head of faculty at the Institute for Landscape Ecology at the University of Kassel, Germany, his grandfather a city gardener for the city of Stuttgart and his great- great- grandfather worked the gardens at the castle of Versailles, France, in the late 1800s.

Lars’ mother’s family owned large plant nurseries in Potsdam since the early 1900s, later in the south and west of Berlin, in Lichtenrade and Spandau. His great- great- grandfather was specialized in the cultivation of cyclames and his mother became a master florist and arts teacher.