Beasley's yard helping your landscape shine

Sutherlin Marlin House has owned Beasley’s Yard in Columbia since 2012. But she has lived in the area her whole life, so she has witnessed the meteoric growth in the region firsthand.   “I remember when you could drive all the way through Thompson’s Station with no red lights,” she says. “It was just open fields.”  Yet the “crazy growth” is good for her business, which sells all-natural hardscaping materials and landscaping supplies to professional landscapers and individual homeowners alike.    “We offer soil, mulch, and rock,” she says, but not plants. “I can sell you everything to grow good plants, but we don’t do plants,” she adds before espousing the benefits of rock.  “You don’t have to water it, trim it or fertilize it,” she says, while noting that she has plenty of experience with plants, having studied horticulture and agriculture at Columbia State and having worked at a nursery before purchasing Beasley’s Yard.  And while it might be more expensive—upfront—to put in rock, it pays itself off, she notes. That helps explain why Beasley’s Yard—which sits on three acres at 2580 Nashville Highway—does a brisk business in decorative gravels.   “I would venture to say we have probably the largest stock of decorative gravel in Tennessee,” says House, with varieties from Alabama and Georgia, not to mention Indiana and North Carolina.  “But all of our mulches are from Tennessee,” she adds, before highlighting the company’s soil products, which include topsoil, potting mix, sand, and organic compost that comes from a mushroom farm elsewhere in Maury County.  “I have a customer who used to live here and moved up to Nashville and paid more for delivery than for the product itself because they know, it’s by far the best,” says House.   Advice For Customers As for her advice for potential customers, House emphasizes the importance of planning ahead, in part because the pandemic has been known to create supply issues and in part because Beasley’s Yard is especially busy from the end of March through the end of May.   “We sell out very quickly here in the springtime. If you are wanting to start on a project, you should probably call us five to seven days in advance,” she begins. “Also, don’t rent equipment if you don’t have materials and a delivery date set. We’ve had customers rent a $350 skid steer and call us on the same day and say, ‘I need eight yards of topsoil.’ And we have to say, ‘Number one, we’re booked up for delivery, and number two, we’re out of topsoil.’”  House also advises customers to account for potential weather-related issues. In other words, if you need to have a project finished by a particular date, plan on having it done weeks in advance because rain can cause unavoidable delivery delays.   “Let’s say you need seven tons of sand delivered,” hypothesizes House. “You don’t want to have seven tons of sand in a seven-ton truck stuck in your yard.”   In terms of other advice, House always tells customers to get references and make sure that people doing landscaping work for you have the correct credentials.   “I have seen a lot of customers come in who used someone off the street and ended up having to spend three times the amount of money they expected because the person wasn’t what they thought they were,” she says. Someone who is unscrupulous—or perhaps simply inexperienced—might also recommend more material than you actually need.   At Beasley’s Yard, the company prides itself on having numerous return customers.   “The people who work here have been here a long time, so a lot of times it’s a familiar voice or face when you call or come in,” says House, who loves getting new customers via word-of-mouth.   “It always makes me happy when people come in, and they are like, ‘Oh, you helped us three years ago, and we are so happy with everything.’ Or people say, ‘You helped our neighbors, and we love what they have.’ That makes you feel good,” she says.  That’s one reason she can’t envision living or working anywhere else.  “I’ve been fortunate to be able to travel a lot in my life, and Tennessee is one of the most beautiful places,” she says, which helps explain why so many people are moving to the area.   “But there is still a good sense of community in Spring Hill, Thompson’s Station, and the Columbia area,” she concludes. “Even though it is booming, you still get that small-town feel.”  Contact Beasley’s Yard 2580 Nashville Hwy. Columbia, TN 38401 (931) 486-2575 beasleysyard.com ”