The lawn care category, as traditionally defined, appears poised for some big changes.
In a bid to strengthen customer relationships and drive better unit economics, lawn care businesses are evolving from their historical core service offering. This means expanding their service lines outside of traditional weed control and fertilizer application into a broader universe of outdoor recurring services spanning lawn care, pest control, tree and shrub care, and other related services, such as landscaping.
As participants in the space strategically expand, in part driven by a desire from consumers for a single, trusted provider, they are experiencing not only improved underlying unit-level economics—by selling adjacent services into already acquired households—but also increased M&A opportunities across a larger total addressable market. Our team expects this to lead to profitable growth that’s both strong and sustainable.
William Blair’s residential services team has been at the forefront of these industry shifts, evidenced by its advisory role in recent category transactions, including ExperiGreen’s December acquisition of Turf Masters Brands and Brentwood’s partnership with Tenex in Perennial Services Group. Gridiron’s July acquisition of Greenix Pest Control demonstrates broader investor interest in these categories. As the strategy continues to take hold, the larger result will likely be increased institutional ownership and sector professionalization, especially as consolidation remains in the early innings.
Macro Factors Making Lawn Care an Attractive Sector
Recurring outdoor service models are characterized by low-ticket, high-frequency and high-value service offerings in end-markets that have experienced decades of durable growth across economic cycles. This growth is buoyed by the recent trends of Americans spending more time at home and investing more in their living spaces. Some of these behavioral changes began during the COVID-19 pandemic and are expected to persist, particularly in a relatively high-interest rate environment and a real estate market that has made new home ownership more challenging, which supports reinvestment in current homes and their outdoor environments.
Those positive characteristics have drawn investors’ notice, but so, too, has the fact that Americans increasingly want lawn care and related services done for them—a move away from a longstanding do-it-yourself mindset that is most notably evident in the older generations of the U.S. population. Consumers also appear to show a preference for working with a single provider; they do not want to be the general contractors of their own homes. That feeling was clear in a third-party survey of affluent households conducted in 2025 on behalf of William Blair, which found 67% of respondents were likely or very likely to hire a single exterior service provider to meet all their specific exterior property needs; another 28% said they were somewhat likely.
Further, while consumers pressed for cash might defer on more expensive items, lawn maintenance and pest removal are both affordable and top-of-mind. Consolidation also offers the potential to bundle services, providing a lower price point that could grow the overall pool of customers.
Where Sector Participants Are Focused
With few big strategic players in the space, lawn care and related services have drawn the attention of private equity and other institutional investors. They see the potential for value creation by creating or enhancing a strong brand and professionalizing customer acquisition to profitably drive organic growth, as well as building geographic density to drive margin accretion.
They also see the role technology can play in data-driven management, leveraging KPI measurement to make informed business decisions resulting in strong EBITDA margins. Due to the highly fragmented nature of the space, pursuing M&A, which can act as a value-creation accelerator, is another core feature of the investment thesis.
Now, through service line diversification, businesses in the category—whether sponsor-backed or founder-owned—have an execution model that can drive above-market organic growth, provided they can effectively cross-sell or bundle services to homeowners. Combining this with an established M&A strategy to identify and execute on opportunities, while driving value creation post-transaction, is a strong investment formula. Additionally, founders in the space may not always need to sell a control interest to capture value, as there are significant opportunities to partner with investors through capital solutions that can maintain a founder’s legacy while affording significant personal wealth creation and preservation.
To learn more about our capabilities, please contact our senior residential services professionals below.
