A New Approach to Lawn Care

The customer has no objections.

A 24-year-old who left Georgetown law school is making waves on Long Island with his unique fleet of silent, self-driving lawn mowers. These machines, equipped with motion sensors, are changing the way lawn care is done.

“We market them as your lawn’s Roomba,” said Kevin Boodrum, the 21-year-old behind Serenity Lawn Care in Huntington.

“I still remember when I first introduced these to customers about two years ago. They were all really intrigued, and there wasn’t a hint of skepticism.”

The innovative mowers created by Husqvarna enable Boodrum and his team to come to clients’ homes and trim lawns at scheduled times. He explained, “It’s incredibly quiet. Some clients even mow at night since their neighbors can’t hear a thing.”

Boodrum admits he never planned to enter the lawn care business. The noise from traditional gas-powered mowers in his neighborhood had made focusing on law school difficult. “Law school was my first choice, but I just got fed up with the relentless noise,” he reflected.

This led him to start his grassroots venture, which has surprisingly grown into a company operating 60 electric mowers—quieter than a car’s tire and free from the chaos of gas-powered alternatives—serving around 80 customers across western Nassau and Suffolk County.

Serenity also installs guide wires along curbs to keep the mowers from wandering into driveways or streets, and sets up battery ports buried in the grass. These guide wires even help the mowers automatically return to charge when needed.

“They’re also quite safe to be around children and pets,” Boodrum noted, demonstrating how the mower will stop when it encounters an obstacle.

Of course, Boodrum still employs traditional workers who handle tasks like seeding and edging—things that can’t easily be automated.

The Grass Is Always Greener

Initially, Boodrum’s family didn’t take kindly to his decision to leave Georgetown to pursue lawn care. He didn’t even have a robot mower in those early days; he was simply using a quiet push mower while driving around in his 2001 Mustang.

“I’d be mowing lawns, and strangers would come out and shout at me. People I hadn’t met would say, ‘What gives? Weren’t you supposed to be in school?’” he recalled.

Those reactions made him feel misunderstood, but he believes dropping out was the best business decision he could have made.

Before leaving school, Boodrum was awarded a grant from Georgetown for his eco-friendly business model. After proving his concept last January, he secured another $20,000 grant, which helped him expand his fleet with additional robotic and electric mowers for quicker grass cutting.

Nowadays, some customers even jokingly tell Boodrum, “Serenity Now!” echoing a popular phrase from “Seinfeld,” as traditional landscapers seem to be feeling the pressure.

“One day, a landscaping company owner got out of their truck and berated me, saying, ‘You’re out of your mind, you don’t know what you’re talking about! Your equipment is junk!’” Boodrum recalled, believing the pushback reflects a resistance to change. He’s now looking to lease electric mowers next, with landscape gardeners as his primary target market.

“The house they were working on when they yelled at me was one of my clients,” he added, underscoring his unique position in the evolving lawn care landscape.