Kairos: The word kairos was an ancient Greek word that means “opportunity,” “season,” or “fitting time” as opposed to Chronos – the Greek word for “tick tock” or “Sequential” time.
Kairos is ‘the right, critical, or opportune moment’. In other words, the idea of “time flies when you’re having fun” is most concisely encapsulates the meaning of Kairos. Imagine sitting in a hammock with a margarita in hand on a beach, or imagine coming home for the holidays and enjoying your time with friends and family – that’s Kairos – the opportune time.
The pandemic hit us all pretty hard. But our company is a true success story. We were born out of unique opportunity in 2019 during the most inopportune time, taking what was learned from the excellence of the finest dining service in Orlando, and brought it back to our roots in the outdoors.
We are an unusual story. Our founder – Nick – loved to cook. But he needed to express himself in a broader way than the kitchen would allow. Always passionate about the outdoors and being raised by a Physician and Horticulturist, Nicholas Jay brings a passion for growing food and medicine – and a recently discovered passion, honey bees – and found the landscape business fulfilled that passion of serving the customer, giving back to the community, being outdoors, and providing creative solutions to unique problems (and doing it the right way at the right time, the first time).
During his childhood, Nick was given unique opportunities to get hands on experience that was supported by his parents side businesses with heavy duty equipment in the outdoors as well as being given the opportunity to see how the local ecology can be leveraged for a harmonic balance between giving and receiving from the land as a steward of God’s creation. This, coupled with the experience of being a team player and leader from the kitchen, gave opportunity during our most inopportune time since WW2 as a global society for Nicholas Jay Enterprises to provide the Deland Community and Surrounding Area with Kairos Landscaping – Your premier landscaping team that allows you to get your kairos back.
During a stint as a Montessori garden teacher, Andy Latchaw was driving through one of the neighborhoods of historic Deland and stopped to check out an anomaly which had been part of his weekly routine to have dinner with his wife and kids at his gram’s house. After passing by after a few weeks, he made the time to stop by this food forest anomaly and chat with the barefoot guy in the front yard pulling up carrots out of the yard, the rest was history. After an awesome conversation with the gardener, Nicholas Johnston, about the business behind the garden, we brought Andy on the team to help develop and run the business with Permaculture in mind.
Chris was a personally referred to Kairos Outdoors by Andy after looking for a means to keep life interesting in the midst of a transitional period in his career. With an impressive legal background and having a competitive streak from collegiate rowing, Chris was looking for a new industry to call home for the interim in his legal horizon. We are so pleased to have such a dedicated team member with a team player mentality and a desire to learn more each day about the art and science of our approach to finding outdoor living solutions. Chris comes from upstate New York and brings an amazing perspective to the differences in the Northern ways of life as compared to Central Florida, and we highly value his perspective on all aspects of our approach what we love to do.
Peter was also referred to Kairos Outdoors by Andy, and comes to work every day with a team player mindset and always comes with a great attitude. With a wide variety of life experience, from Modeling to Food Service to high level team sports, Peter brings a passion for the garden from his own house to work every day along with a willingness to learn. One of his many impressive qualities is the mindset he advertises, “The more I know, the less I understand”. Even with that mindset, Peter has more knowledge about gardening and growing plants and trees than your average Joe, and is a valuable part of the team, adding more to the collective pool of knowledge and experience that makes Kairos Outdoors what it is.
With running an outdoor service business, we deal with a lot of support companies to keep us on the road for our reputation of dependability. One late morning in the Summer of 2026, we were getting some new tires for our fleet, and Landon was on the tire crew helping us load up tires. As he was helping us load, we noticed Landon was much more cordial and laid back, while simultaneously working diligently hard to keep our landscape crew on schedule – it was as if he understood that time = money. He had hustle, a sense of respect for the clock. We stuffed a business card in his shirt pocket and offered him some part time work if he felt he’d like to pick up some more hours if they were lacking at his tire job at the time. After finding out he has a great attitude and a great mechanical mindset with his side work lifting his friend’s trucks and doing suspension work at his own house in his spare time, we brought him on as a valuable addition to the crew to keep us on track with our lawn maintenance routine.