"I like to tell our clients that I do everything outside," says Absolute Custom Landscape (ACL) founder and owner, David Cordone. "If you can't imagine it, I can! From backyard kitchens to putting greens, ACL can do it."

After moving to California from Massachusetts in the 1980s, Cordone felt a strong desire to work outside in the terrific climate. Already holding considerable experience in landscaping, he decided to combine that hands-on knowledge with his formal graphic arts training to start his own company. A strong leader himself, Cordone received sound guidance and inspiration from a talented group of industry professionals, including Don LaForest, all of whom demonstrated a remarkable ability to combine integrity and honesty with excellence in landscaping services. These professional examples, along with a supportive group of friends, helped pave and define Cordone's way into the world of self-employment.

Upon opening its doors in 1987, ACL started small, offering a limited selection of outdoor services that included irrigation, plants, patios, and fencing. But it wasn't long before ACL gained a reputation and recognition -- and Cordone became a landscape contractor -- allowing the company to expand its services and enabling it to create the most amazing and wonderful outdoor spaces imaginable.

Today, ACL provides customers with one-stop, service-oriented shopping for any and all of their landscaping needs. ACL both designs and installs landscapes, offering a full array of vertually anything and everything a customer could dream up for a yard or outside space, with the ability to take almost any project from conception through reality. The company's most recently added specialty features tropical, paradise-style landscaping services, complete with tiki huts and bamboo structures. ACL also has experience in working with clients interested in bringing the peaceful serenity of a feng shui, oriental-garden style into their lives. Along with this ability to transform its clients' visions into realities, ACL upholds a firm commitment to conducting business with service and integrity. Thus, most of the company's business is referral driven, with many clients returning to ACL for landscaping services when they purchase new or second homes.

Attesting to the company's excellence, ACL's work has been spotlighted in several magazines, as well as on HGTV's Landscaper's Challenge, a show that has featured Cordone several times during the past few years. In fact, Cordone credits HGTV with helping to reinvigorate public interest in making the most of outdoor spaces, which in turn brings ACL more clients.

Continuous growth at the company led David Cordone's wife, Susan, to join ACL in 1999 to assist with administrative reponsibilities. The Cordones have three small children, and ACL is flexible enough as a business for both parents to take an active and involved role in raising their children. The fact that the Cordones live and work in the same community as a family and as business owners gives them a vested interest in the well being of their surroundings. Not only do they participate in selected programs to assist children in the local community, but also, ACL holds memberships in the Manhattan Beach Chamber of Commerce, the California Landscapers Contractors Association, and the Better Business Bureau.

Alongside its community endeavors, ACL also works to benefit the commnity in its business operations, always innovating with a mind to serving both its customers' and its community's needs. Thus the company has embraced the emerging opportunities to use synthetic and recycled materials, such as putting in "green" and/or long-lasting deck and fencing materials.

Ultimately, ACL founder and owner David Cordone hopes to someday be a nationally recognized and renowned landscape designer with the ability to provide his designing services to a larger geographic client base. As he works toward this goal, Absolute Custom Landscape will continue to focus on creating beautiful outdoor living spaces in the surrounding community, one block at a time.