In the summer of 1993, Richard Wood started running down the entrepreneurial trail.
With $26 he made a couple hundred photo-copies of a flyer he designed on his IBM PS2/Model 25 desktop computer, bought a few meager supplies, a cup of coffee and he was off!
Starting off by offering driveway seal coating services the company soon added a snowplowing truck and some commercial lawn equipment.
By the later half of the 1990's Richard had to admit that Trees were the most enjoyable part of the business. In January of 1998 The Great Ice Storm opened the door for further training and interest in the broader world of arboriculture.
In the Fall of 2001, understanding that success best comes by focusing on doing a few things well, Richard directed that the Company to focus solely on Arboriculture.
Just over two years later, in April of 2004, Richard sat for, and passed the ISA Certified Arborist Exam to become ISA Certified Arborist NE-6308A.
Mother nature has had a unique hand in shaping the company. Hurricane Charlie, the first of several devastating Hurricanes to hit Florida in 2004, "blew open" some more doors for growth.
Here in VT the 3rd quarter of 2004 had seen an abnormal down turn in business. With this little respite from work here in Vermont, Richard took the opportunity to travel to Port Charlotte, Florida (where Charlie made land fall) and inspect the devastation.
What came of that trip? A 3 year winter presence for the Company throughout Charlotte County Florida doing restoration and mitigation work.
The summer of 2005 brought more changes as Richard tried hard to capture the essence of the company in a new name.
Hivernant (pronounced "Hee-Ver-Non") is a French Canadian Word that has no real modern use or definition. It's origins come from the French word "Hiver," for winter.
It is an old, new-world french, used by the "civilized french colonists of the 17th & 18th centuries to refer to the fur trappers that "Wintered Over" in the wilderness of Canada and the Hudson's Bay region. These mountain men were called, "les Hivernant!"
While in Florida the preceding winter, a land far from home the, the name Hivernant began to make sense. Certainly there was no way anyone in Florida would take us seriously if we called ourselves "Snowbird Tree!"
And so, being people intimately familiar with the Urban Forest and true woodsman Hivernant became ours.
More than ever, Hivernant Arborists is committed to excellence in the arboricultural industry and the business community. Hivernant supports the Tree Care Industry Association, International Society of Arboriculture, the National Arbor Day Foundation and the National Federation of Independent Businesses.
Hivernant Arborists also works with young people enrolled in the Urban Forestry Training Program through the Federal Job Corps. This gives their students real life on the job training. While we are working on your trees see if you can spot the students! (They are the Young Ones!)
Hivernant's wealth of knowledge grows daily ensuring that they are on the cutting edge of advances in this exciting field. We subscribe to today's top Trade Journals, attend conferences and seminars on emerging science, techniques and research and read current text books and literature on arboriculture.
We also never lose sight of our primary responsibility, You, our customer. It is our hope & our purpose to touch the lives of those around us in a positive way every day. We hope that in some way, however small, we have brought a ray of hope, peace or happiness into your life today.
Life and happiness are choices, lets all choose to enjoy living!