By Anne Payne

The Orange Leader

 

Mallorie Frey Henning grew-up enjoying her family’s long-time business of landscaping, in the family-owned Frey’s Landscape LLC in Orange.

Her grandparents founded the business in 1975, passing it to the next two generations. Henning is the third generation to learn the trade of landscape art.

One of her two sisters has taken a semester off college to help her parents with their flooded home. The other sister is a teacher in Dripping Springs, Texas, near Austin, but is not involved in the family landscaping business.

She may not have a degree in Agriculture or Landscaping, but Henning has learned “hands-on,” one of the best ways to know a trade.

However, her dad, Mark Frey, has a Horticulture degree from Tyler Jr. College, formally getting in the family affair in 1982, after working with his dad since age 10. He recalls days of working for Nelda Stark with the Stark Foundation by watering all the plants and vegetation from wee hours of the morning until just before 9 a.m.

Frey said, “Mrs. Stark did not believe in irrigation systems, so we watered things the old-fashioned ways, with hoses, since she did not want standing water to be at the venues to cause problems for guests.

Helping her grandparents and parents with mulching, planting, raking, laying concrete, cultivating, pruning, trimming, etc., has become a way of life for the mother of four children, ages 10, 3, 2, and 1.

After dropping off the 10-year-old at Little Cypress Intermediate and the little ones at a pre-school, Henning is ready for outside work.

Actually, her team worked the hardest just prior to the destructive Tropical Storm Harvey, hurriedly getting plants firmly in the ground before the raging waters hit Orange County. The plants remained sturdy and steadfast, with very few exceptions.

Her family’s business is proud to service the campuses of Lamar State College-Orange, as well as Lamar State College-Port Arthur and the grounds of the Orange Public Library. Their commercial clients also include the grounds of Shangri-La Center and the other Stark venues, and the remodeled Orange Train Depot.

Private clients are serviced when time allows.

Currently, due to Harvey, Frey’s is overwhelmed with business.

“When a person’s yard is cleaned-up, it’s a little easier to live with mess inside,” Henning adds, referring to Harvey devastation.

Frey’s is officially announcing, at the reading of this article, that Frey’s will be selling landscape hard goods very soon in their previous location off the access road of Interstate 10 West near Cecil Toyota.

They plan to make it official on Facebook on Friday, according to Henning and her dad.

This will enable the citizens of Orange to purchase items in large quantities such as mulch, topsoil, gravel, pallets of grass, etc. Frey’s will gladly load the large purchases in a truck bed or other device.

In this way, Frey’s is servicing the immediate needs of the storm-damaged community. Residents appear ready to get their yards back in shape, creating a sense of normalcy.

No holiday items will be available at this time, according to Mark Frey. Just basic items to complete the yard are the focus of opening the facility off the I-10 West feeder.