About
Small on purpose, and staying that way.
Sabal & Sage has turned down more work than it has taken in the last four years. That is not a boast — it is the mechanism by which the work stays good.
Cape Coral Founded 2009
The founder
Dean Ferraro spent eleven years growing grass nobody was allowed to walk on.
He came up through golf course maintenance — six years on a crew in Fort Myers, five more as an assistant superintendent. Course turf is grown to a tolerance. You learn very quickly that almost every problem in a lawn is a mowing problem wearing a disguise.
He started Sabal & Sage in 2009 with one truck, one trailer and eleven properties. The intention was never to build the biggest crew in Lee County. It was to find out whether residential turf could be held to something close to a course standard if somebody simply refused to cut corners — and then to keep the company small enough that nobody ever had to.
Seventeen years later there are three crews and ninety-four properties. Dean still runs Route 1 on Mondays and Tuesdays. If you call the number on this site during the week, there is a reasonable chance he answers it from a truck.
How we operate
Four rules we don't bend.
Each of these costs us money. Each of them is why clients stay an average of six years.
Rule one
Twelve properties a day. Not eighteen.
The industry standard route is fifteen to twenty stops. At that pace a half-acre property gets about twenty minutes, which is enough to mow it and nothing else. We cap routes at twelve so there is time to detail, and so the crew is not making up lost minutes on your lawn.
Rule two
The same two people, every visit.
Crews are assigned to routes, not shuffled by availability. The people cutting your lawn this week cut it last week, know where the sprinkler heads are, know which gate sticks, and notice when something has changed. Continuity is a maintenance tool, not a courtesy.
Rule three
Blades off the machine twice a week.
A blade that has done fifteen hours of Florida sand is not cutting, it is tearing. Torn St. Augustine goes tan at the tip within twenty-four hours and reads as a browning lawn from the street. We keep three sharpened sets per deck and change them mid-week whether they look dull or not.
Rule four
Nothing gets subcontracted.
If we cannot do a piece of work with our own people and our own equipment, we say so and give you two names. It is the only way to be accountable for a result — and it is the reason the list of things we don't do is published on the services page.
By the numbers
Seventeen years, counted honestly.
Properties under active program
Full-time staff across three crews
Average years a client stays with us
Maximum properties on a single route day
The crew
Six people. You will meet two of them.
Everyone here is full-time, on payroll, and has been with the company at least three years. There is no seasonal labour and no day-hire. It is the single most expensive decision the business makes, and the only one that has never been up for review.
Every crew member holds a Florida Limited Commercial Landscape Maintenance certification and completes the state's Green Industries Best Management Practices training — which is what allows us to apply fertiliser legally in Lee County at all.
Meet your crew
Route 2 Tuesday, north Cape Coral
- Licensing
- FDACS Commercial Fertiliser Applicator #JB12704
- Insurance
- $2M general liability · Full workers' compensation
- Training
- Green Industries BMP certified — all field staff
- Association
- Florida Nursery, Growers & Landscape Association
“They raised the mower an inch and the lawn fixed itself. Eleven years of chemicals had not.”
Next step
Come and see whether we fit.
We would rather tell you in week one that your property needs something we do not offer than find out in month six. The walk-through is as much our assessment as yours.