For now, "I just get pleasure from seeing my work, especially on jobs like this where everyone can see it," he said.

Moore, a business major, echoes the sentiment.

"It's peaceful to see that your hard work can blossom into something beautiful. It makes me feel good to help people out. And it lets teens know they can work for themselves."

When Peoples read a flier on her block telling of the fledging business' "professional expertise" and "competitive rates," she thought of her wretched yard and the hatchet jobs it has endured, and thought, 'Why not?'

When she learned it was run by neighborhood youths, she picked up the phone.

"It would give them something to do," she says, "and for those not going to college, they could make a living for themselves."

For Daniels, who also grew up in West Oak Lane, landscaping was "the best decision I ever made."

Twenty-two years ago, laid off as machinist at a Bensalem scrap-metal yard, Daniels took a job at Pennsylvania State University as a security guard. Three years later, he noticed a job posting for a landscaper.

"That job stayed open for a year," he said. "Nobody wanted it."

Daniels reasons that was because of the low pay and the guarantee of working in all of nature's elements. But as the father of a newborn son, he needed the health benefits.

He worked that landscaping job at Penn State for 19 years before starting his own business.

"It gives you a chance to be creative in designing," he says of landscaping. "And I've always liked working with my hands."

Now with his three kids in college, Daniels uses landscaping to help others.

Weiner recruited him as program director for Teens Go Green based on his expertise, mentoring experience, and no-nonsense demands on quality, which Daniels jokes isn't his fault. His father was a Marine.

"I knew it was a kid-driven program," Daniels says, "and that it would take more sacrifice than money. I jumped at the chance."

In planning the business, Daniels stressed professionalism to the teens. When it came to training, he soon realized that they knew nothing, not even how to start a lawn mower.

"That's really why I'm so proud of them," he says. "They learned so quickly.

"More so, they understand you always have to give back. You want to be in a position where you're a giver, because givers do well."

With calls coming in, business has expanded to other Northwest neighborhoods, such as Germantown and East Mount Airy. And there are repeat customers like Peoples, whose lawn the teens maintain every two weeks, for $45.

As the teens finish up, Peoples surveys her yard, where a beige canopy sits in the center, and two barbecue grills stand at the ready, off to the side. There's a pink rosebush that's "been fighting for a long time," she says, and her newly trimmed rhododendron bushes and freshly cut grass.