About Us

Love of the outdoors, plants, and watching something grow is what the two co-owners of Glass City Landscape, Inc. both have in common.

Growing up on the outskirts of Toledo, Ohio, Keith Fager remembers helping his father with their backyard orchard and small evergreen nursery. While still attending high school, Keith enrolled in a two-year vocational school to further his knowledge and love of working with plants. Following graduation, he worked briefly for Champion spark plug, but quickly learned that he needed to get his hands back in the soil.

Ken Gilson grew up on the family farm in rural Deerfield, Michigan. Ken was interested in horticulture, and working with green plants as early as Jr. high. He attended a two-year vocational school, and then went on to graduate from Michigan State University.

Ken began his career working for a small landscaping company in Toledo. It is there that Ken and Keith first ran into each other.

Two short years later, in 1981, Ken and Keith started their very own landscape company. They named it Glass City because Toledo is known as the glass capital of the world!

In those early days, we both went door to door to drum up business mowing residential lawns. This led to our first big break - mowing and grounds maintenance for the local McDonalds Restaurant chain.

As our young company grew from a simple lawn maintenance service into a full service landscape maintenance and landscape construction business, so did our need for quality people.

Ken's brother, Tim Gilson, helped out whenever he could. It wasn't long until he too caught the landscaping fever. After graduating from Michigan State University, Tim joined the team overseeing the nursery and retail operations.

And, while just looking for a summer job, Scott Wise found one, and never looked for another. Scott is our landscape foreman and resident handyman. We haven't found too many projects that Scott can't handle!

As our company grew, Ken and Keith decided to do even more with the plants. We brought in a few trees to sell on the small lot we were using for the business.

That was the beginning of the retail business. By now, Glass City Landscape was well known as an installation and landscape maintenance company, so a new identity for the retail division was needed. Ken took one look a the old bike shack that was used as a small retail sales building, and the Plant Shack was born.

The Plant Shack has grown over the years, and especially in the past two years, thanks in a large part to Jenny Stamm.

Jenny had aspirations to being a school teacher, but also has a love of plants and the outdoors. She combined both talents by teaching the Plant Shack's many customers about everything from hummingbird gardens to landscape design. Jenny graduated from Owens Community College, in the two year landscape and turfgrass program, where we have acquired many great student interns.