First of all, it may be a month or two before all the industries that seemed to fall apart after Labor Day start to mend. Housing, energy, banking, mortgage and automobiles certainly are major parts of the US economy. I think one of the reasons they all fell apart was that the country was also stuck in the uncertainty of an election year.

Now that the election has been settled, the bailouts have begun, the interest rates have been lowered, and the peak retail season is behind us, I think uncertainty is basically over and everyone has an idea of what it will take to begin climbing back up the ladder to prosperity.

I have a few friends in the mortgage industry, and every one of them is swamped with refinancing applications. While a great deal of their business is refinancing existing fixed loans, there is certainly a large percentage that are fixing their broken adjustable loans. With interest rates low and banks renegotiating with upside-down homeowners, the market will stabilize and open the door to new and existing home sales.

I don?EUR??,,????'???t really understand the auto industry, so for me that is hard to predict. I do know that the direction of automobile manufacturing is changing from fun to drive cars to cars that drive themselves. With the technological advantages that the United States enjoys could very well put Detroit back in the drivers seat of the industry . . . Even though there may no longer be a drivers seat in the cars that today?EUR??,,????'???s kindergarteners will be driving when they come of age.

In any event, 2009 will be the year things start to head back upward for the landscape industry. In this issue of Landscape Contractor National, we asked several of the nations largest landscape contraction and maintenance companies about their outlook for 2009 and almost all concurred that construction will begin to pick up in the spring and will be solid, if not super, by mid-summer.

In the mean time, now is a great time to review your company goals and objectives and look closely at your personnel to make sure you have the best team possible to get you through the first part of the year and help you accelerate into the years ahead.

There is a real opportunity in the landscape industry to attract new members from the ranks of the skilled unemployed. Many landscape companies have cut back, leaving qualified workers available on the market. This means now is a good time to recruit and build your team.

Now is also the time for the associations to look at promoting the career potential in the landscape industry, trying to bring those unemployed from other industries into this industry. Report after report shows that the illegal immigrants are leaving the country due to lack of work.

In the sprit of change, now is the time for the leaders of the landscape industry to change two things; 1) The way its members enlist workers and, 2) The way the country?EUR??,,????'???s workforce views the status of employment in the landscape industry.

When you pay dues to your state?EUR??,,????'???s landscape association and/or to associations like PLANET or the ANLA, you should demand that a solid effort be put into promoting the status of the industry. Over the past decade the Landscape Architect?EUR??,,????'???s association (the ASLA) has done a great job in promoting the profession of landscape architecture.

More and more you find landscape architects as the main characters in TV Shows and documentaries. More and more you are reading about the impact of landscape design on cities and park systems. This is, in large part, due to the efforts of the ASLA.

However . . . How often do you see landscape contractors or maintenance professionals being glamorized on anything but the landscape channel? Even still, those landscape channel shows are more about the home improvement than the professional providing the service.

Remember, the associations are there to serve you and this is one of the greatest opportunities to come your way . . .

Yes . . . Things will be fine in 2009, but still it is time to refine the line and put up the sign that the Landscape Industry is one of the noblest and rewarding industries in this great nation . . .

God Bless . . .