Working Earth

Working Earth began in 1980 with a lawn mower and a set of tools Jude Villa borrowed from her grandfather. She incorporated it as Working Earth Organic Gardening & Landscaping in 1990, and the company still describes itself as a female-owned organic landscape company after more than 35 years on Martha's Vineyard. Organic is the whole proposition, not a label: the company says it is a certified organic landscape company with trained organic land care professionals, runs both an organic and a biological lawn program, and keeps a NOFA-certified Organic Land Care Professional on staff. Villa is a certified Tree Ambassador; the operations manager is a licensed pesticide applicator. Around the garden and lawn work sit stonework, driveways, site work, irrigation, containers and tree care. Vineyard Style Magazine has profiled the company twice, describing design work that runs from raw construction sites to overgrown landscapes, and a 2016 MV Times piece called Villa a very busy lady — she also owns MV Mosquito & Tick. The one thing worth knowing before you call is a land-use fight. In February 2022 the MV Times reported that the Oak Bluffs zoning board of appeals was continuing a public hearing over a landscaper's use of a property off the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road after months of neighbour complaints, and later that month reported attorneys for the neighbours and for Working Earth trading accusations at the hearing. The Vineyard Gazette reported in March 2022 that the board settled the dispute. That is about where the company stores and stages, not about the gardens it builds. Almost nobody has written about the work itself — one Google rating, and a BBB file with an A+ and no complaints. If you want organic land care on the Island, ask for references on gardens of comparable scale and get the maintenance program in writing.