My first shot working in illustrator. I realized the roots/imagery ideas are probably more photoshop based --  I'm trying to focus on illustrator for the time being, so I put those concepts aside for now. 

Whitmores is a mom and pop landscaping company that was established in 1945. They are pretty traditional, so I wanted to bring some modern elements, while still keeping the tranditional feelings of professionalism and boldness. Here is the old logo: 

Here are my initial ideas:

some of the angles may not be perfect -- I didn't want to spend too much time on those issues in case I don't move forward with those images.