About Full Radius

My name is Mike Ball. I have been working in the Houston landscape industry since 1986.

I started Mike’s Lawn Service at the ambitious age of sixteen, knocking door-to-door and passing out flyers. After seven successful years and a lot of learning by doing, I was given the opportunity to sell my company and join Texas Environments.

Under the tutelage of Brian and Rodney Warner, I gained a tremendous amount of knowledge—from managing multiple crews to learning more about commercial and residential landscape installation and maintenance. It was an opportunity to take what I had learned on my own and begin seeing the landscape industry from a much broader perspective.

With a constant desire to learn and grow in the green industry—and always striving to go from good to great—I made it a point throughout my career to learn from as many knowledgeable professionals as I could.

One of those opportunities was spending time with Grant Stephenson, owner of Horticultural Consultants and a recognized authority on cold-hardy palms, bamboo, and cycads. It proved to be one of the most rewarding learning experiences of my career. Grant taught me a tremendous amount about the identification, care, and proper installation of palms, bamboo, and cycads. Through that experience, I gained an even greater appreciation for plant life and horticulture.

I later spent several years working as a Commercial Landscape Project Manager under Dean Carpenter, owner of Houston Landscape Unlimited. This is where I further developed my skills managing and installing large commercial landscape and irrigation projects, many ranging in value from approximately $50,000 to $700,000.

During this period, I also became much more aware of water conservation and its importance. I gained experience managing CALSENSE irrigation management systems used on large commercial properties, homeowners associations, and master-planned communities.

I later became instrumental in developing irrigation maintenance programs for LMC, owned by Bill and Brad Cox and one of the larger commercial landscape maintenance companies operating in the Houston area. I eventually became Branch Manager, overseeing nine maintenance crews.

With a large amount of recyclable material coming back to the office from approximately twenty-one crews, I also helped develop a system for separating green waste, cans, plastics, and paper. It reduced disposal costs while keeping recyclable material out of the waste stream. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle has long been something my family and I believe in, and I have tried to carry that philosophy into the way I work as well.

I then had an opportunity to further my career in landscape construction and management with Encore Group. I initially joined Encore to develop the company’s in-house irrigation service division. Over the next several years, my responsibilities continued to grow as I moved through positions in commercial landscape maintenance supervision and management, ultimately becoming General Manager.

By this point, more than a decade had passed since I had owned my own company. But the entrepreneurial drive had never left me. With the experience I had gained and the confidence that came with it, I knew the time was right to take that leap of faith and go back into business for myself.

I formed Mike Ball Irrigation.

I chose irrigation as the foundation because it was a trade I knew well. I was a licensed irrigator, confident in my abilities, and knew that irrigation alone could provide a dependable way to earn a living while I rebuilt a business of my own.

But Mike Ball Irrigation may have been the name on the truck; the work was never limited to irrigation. From the very beginning, I approached properties as complete outdoor environments. In fact, my first project under the Mike Ball Irrigation name was for a custom home and included irrigation, landscaping, drainage, and outdoor lighting.

For the next 14-plus years, we worked hard. We built a great team and completed countless projects of all sizes, always with one primary goal: to treat every project with the respect, craftsmanship, and attention it deserved.

Whether it was a $5,000 or $10,000 project or one valued at $50,000, $100,000, or even $500,000, the philosophy was the same. I wanted the customer to see the finished project and experience that “wow” effect—to know that we had cared about their property and the finished product as much as they did.

Some of my greatest satisfaction came at the end of those projects. Many times, the relationship we had built with a client meant the job ended with more than an invoice and a handshake. Every once in a while, it even ended with a hug.

Those moments meant something to me then, and they still do today.

Over the years, the company was also known as Mike Ball Irrigation Landscape & Lighting, a name that better reflected the breadth of work we had actually been doing from the beginning. Irrigation was important, but it was only one part of the complete outdoor environment.

After more than 14 years with Mike Ball Irrigation, the time felt right for a new chapter—one that better expressed what my work had really been about throughout my career.

After 40 years in the landscape industry, I have come to see a property as more than a collection of separate services.

It is everything you see when you sit on your porch, look out your window, walk around your property, or step outside your front or back door.

The landscape, irrigation, lighting, drainage, hardscape, trees, and other outdoor elements all affect one another. They should be considered together.

That is the idea behind Full Radius.

Full Radius isn’t about suddenly offering a collection of different services. It is finally a name broad enough to represent the way I have approached outdoor projects for most of my career.

It means looking at the entire outdoor environment, listening to what a client wants to accomplish, helping them understand what can be done, and advising them based on decades of experience. It means seeing how all of those individual pieces should work together—not only for the project we’re working on today, but with an eye toward what that property may need tomorrow.

I am passionate about my work, and I still believe in going the extra mile to do a job right. I care about the quality of the work, the decisions that go into it, and, ultimately, the satisfaction of the people who trust me with their property.

That was important to me when I started knocking on doors at sixteen years old.

Forty years later, it still is.