A 4-Year Roadmap

It’s a new year, and with it comes a fresh start to lead your landscape company to new heights. To help guide you in your business decisions for the near future, we’ve outlined a roadmap of where we think things are headed centered around some of the industry’s hot topics.

The Future of Artificial Intelligence

One major question many are wondering is where artificial intelligence will be in the next few years as its capabilities have grown by leaps and bounds since first being brought to the public’s attention.

Ian Khan, a dedicated futurist specializing in artificial intelligence, predicts AI will have evolved from being just helpful to essential across industries within the next four years.

“Forecasts by Gartner predict that AI-driven innovation will create $2.9 trillion in business value by 2026,” Khan says.

Khan anticipates some of these capabilities to include real-time adaptive decision-making, bio-AI integration for soil health monitoring and AI models that can predict optimal plant species combinations for varied landscapes.

“Imagine drones equipped with deep-learning algorithms that can assess land health and provide on-the-spot recommendations for treatments,” Khan says. “This aligns with AI’s rapid enhancement of visual and environmental analysis, which could soon match or surpass human sensory precision, offering incredible insights into soil, foliage, and ecological health at a molecular level.”

Khan expects AI to redefine predictive landscape maintenance. He notes that currently, AI-driven environmental analytics can predict specific weather trends up to two weeks in advance, which could expand to months soon. He says that AI could eventually offer micro-forecasts for specific regions, making it possible for landscape companies to optimize watering, fertilization, and pest control well before issues arise.

“Innovations like these will shift the industry to a data-driven model, where every plant’s growth stage is tracked and optimized,” Khan says. “Such shifts will be transformational for sustainable landscaping practices, preserving resources while maximizing output.”

A fear some have is how AI will impact jobs. According to a report from the World Economic Forum, AI and automation could replace 85 million jobs by 2025, while also creating 97 million new roles.

“In landscaping, while AI will handle data-heavy tasks like predictive analysis or soil health assessments, it will likely remain an efficiency tool for physical roles, aiding rather than eliminating jobs in manual labor,” Khan says. “Advanced AI-enabled tools could amplify productivity, enabling landscapers to focus on design and customer experience rather than repetitive tasks.”

Khan predicts that AI will bring landscape companies closer to peak efficiency.

“With AI handling backend and data-heavy roles, companies can reach unprecedented efficiencies in labor and resource management, reducing time and waste,” Khan says. “However, there will always be room for improvement as technology evolves, new techniques emerge, and customer expectations rise.”

Another fear related to AI is over-reliance on algorithms. Khan argues that AI will fuel innovative landscape design by freeing up the mental bandwidth previously used for administrative tasks.

Some risks to be mindful of with AI include data breaches and ethical usage. Khan says that as AI gathers data on soil composition, irrigation, and customer preferences, weak cybersecurity can open the door to data theft, exposing sensitive client and environmental information.

“Furthermore, AI algorithms must be shielded against cyber-attacks, as manipulation could distort operational efficiencies and even lead to financial losses,” Khan says.

Ethically, Khan says landscape companies need to be transparent with clients about how data influences their landscape choices and respect ecological considerations to avoid over-reliance on AI for profit-driven, potentially unsustainable practices.

Currently, the barriers to adopting AI include high costs and a lack of AI-specific training. However, Khan expects as the technology becomes cheaper, more small to medium-sized businesses will be able to take advantage of AI.

“Additionally, as training programs for AI in landscaping emerge, the workforce will become more comfortable using advanced technologies,” Khan says.

Khan says failing to adopt AI is the new “missed Industrial Revolution.”

“Those that ignore AI risk obsolescence, struggling to keep up with competitors who can operate faster, cheaper, and more precisely,” Khan says. “As Malcolm Gladwell describes in “The Tipping Point,” businesses that fail to adapt risk falling behind once the landscape industry fully embraces AI-driven practices.”

Mergers and Acquisitions Market

Another ubiquitous subject in the landscape industry is the prevalence of mergers and acquisitions and where they will go from here. According to Jeff Harkness, founder and CEO of 3PG Advisors, based in Alpharetta, Georgia, he is seeing no slowdown in private equity groups raising capital.

Tom Fochtman, CEO of Ceibass Venture Partners, based in Arvada, Colorado, agrees there is a good market ahead, but there are less candidates for buyers to pick from. Fochtman explains the landscape industry is like any other that experiences consolidation. There is a frenzy early on, and many great companies sell.

“There are a lot of great landscape companies all over the U.S., but many of them are younger and not ready to sell, largely due to the age of the owners and their companies are not large enough for the owners to create enough wealth if they were to sell,” Fochtman says. “The good news is we have way more potential buyers today than we did in the past. There will always be a good market for great companies to sell.”

Harkness says we will continue to see more activity in ‘bolt-on’ services like lighting, irrigation, pools, and more.

Despite the increased consolidation of brands, Harkness and Fochtman don’t expect to see any consumer pushback against private-equity-owned companies.

“Customers don’t care who the owners are,” Harkness says. “It’s about service, communication, pricing and partnership.”

However, Fochtman notes independent owners will always have an advantage when competing against large, multi-state companies.

“20 years ago, when I was an operator, I would hand my business card to a potential client and tell them to feel free to call me,” Fochtman says. “I would subtly say Mr. ValleyCrest and Mr. Brickman will not be able to do that. Same today. That will always be an advantage to locally-owned companies.”

Harkness says he expects to see more ‘buyside’ activity from companies not backed by private equity, but these strategic acquisitions will be limited by access to capital.

“There are very few, true strategic acquisitions done in the landscape industry today,” Fochtman says. “Most local, true strategic buyers don’t really exist. I think landscape owners don’t have an appetite for risk. They don’t want to invest the money for an acquisition. They have more of a mindset to grow organically.”  

As private equity focuses on commercial landscape maintenance, it has opened up market share for other customer bases. Harkness says that residential is in high demand.

“Mariani Premier Group is the first significant play in the residential sector,” Fochtman says. “They have done an amazing job without any real competition.”

Economic Trends

Whether you are looking to buy, sell or grow your company, the economy can play a role in your ability to do so.

Taylor St. Germain, an economist with ITR Economics, expects the economy to heat up in 2025 and 2026, and companies that haven’t prepared aren’t going to be ready for the growth that will come during these two years.

“The majority of the economy is growing,” St. Germain says. “There are certain segments that are going to perform better than others. I think it’s really important as you’re planning and looking where to allocate your resources and your time and your people that you have a perspective on which markets are going to grow better than others.”

St. Germain says they expect single and multifamily markets to have better growth rates in 2025 than what they see for some of the commercial construction segments. By 2026, there will be growth in all the commercial construction segments and continued growth in residential.

“Regardless of what the media says, we continue to see some strong trends in consumer spending,” St. Germain says. “It has slowed down. We still see retail sales performing well. We’re not expecting a recession in retail sales. We continue to see real personal incomes rising despite what the media says. We see that the consumers generally have debt under control.”

St. Germain says interest rates will likely come down into 2025.

“As we get in ‘26 and beyond, we do expect to see some higher interest rates and some higher inflation, and so it’s important to have that plan in place,” St. Germain says.

He expects inflation to climb because of the level of government spending, and they are starting to see a rebound in the money supply.

“Those are great leading indicators to tell us that inflation is coming our way,” St. Germain says. “The other thing that I think is very important is labor costs are going to drive some of that inflation. We’re projecting between 25% and 28% increase in labor costs over the course of the next five years. That is no small number when it comes to the increase in labor costs.”

St. Germain says companies will face a serious labor shortage over the next five years.

“A lot of the reason for that is just we have a large generation of the baby boomers exiting the workforce, and we don’t have enough immigration into the country to really offset all of the job openings that we have,” St. Germain says.

He says the usage of AI will be critical moving forward as businesses have to find ways to make their existing workforce more efficient.

“Otherwise we’re going to find ourselves at a capacity constraint as we move forward now,” St. Germain says.

He says even with the implementation of AI, labor costs will rise.

ITR Economics has been predicting a second Great Depression in the 2030s and St. Germain encourages companies to put themselves in a position to be aggressive during these years rather than reactive. He cautions businesses not to be in a high-debt situation closer to that downturn.

“If there are major investments or expansion, things that you need to do to prepare for growth, we’re suggesting that you do those things now or as soon as possible,” St. Germain says. “If you make investments now, you have a four- to five-year runway of growth to really see a return on these investments, see your business grow and have the time to recoup your cash and put yourself in a low leverage, low debt situation going into the 2030s.”

St. Germain says those who don’t have a lot of debt and have cash to deploy during the 2030s will be able to take advantage of some of the downturn.

He also advises owners to understand their leading indicators.

“Understand how you’re going to be moving through these cycles based on your leading indicators so that you’re able to prepare well in advance of any accelerating, slowing, or contraction that you might see out there in the markets,” St. Germain says.

St. Germain encourages diversifying and moving into other spaces.

“You have about five consecutive years of growth, depending on which market you’re in, before we move through this next major downturn,” St. Germain says. “I think you really need to spend a lot more time thinking about those five-year forecasts and understanding how are we going to take on growth?”

Regulatory Impacts

While St. Germain says the election results don’t change their forecast for the economy, they are watching some legislation closely, especially with the Republicans taking the presidency, House and Senate. It’s likely to see more legislation passed because of the synchrony of one party having control.

Andrew Bray, NALP senior vice president of government relations and membership, says one major legislative issue the government affairs team is monitoring is the status of the H-2B program. He says although Trump distanced himself from the Project 2025 document during his campaign, many of the individuals involved in writing the document have been placed in key positions in his administration.

“We’d be naive to think that some of the things in Project 2025 aren’t true,” Bray says. “In Project 2025, there’s a section on H-2B visas, and it says do not incur your discretionary authority to release additional visas. That’s called the supplemental visa cap, which we have been getting for the last six years.”

Additionally, Project 2025 also says it plans to phase out H-2B entirely by 2030. Bray says the president cannot phase out H-2B by himself; that would take an act of Congress. However, Trump’s appointed deputy chief of staff for policy opposes the H-2B program and will likely try to push President Trump to not exert discretionary authority to release additional H-2B visas if given the option.

“We have people inside of the Trump administration that are against the use of the program, and so this is going to be a very difficult couple of years,” Bray says.

In light of these concerns, Bray says the NALP government affairs team is pushing for the discretionary visa language changed from ‘may’ to ‘shall.’

As for pesticides, Bray says with the Republican-controlled House and Senate, he is optimistic about seeing the Farm Bill passed. Also, he says an EPA under Trump will be more receptive to industry concerns and how products are used.

“He is going to be very good at reducing regulatory burdens, and he is going to actually look at some things that happened over the last year or so that could be detrimental to our industry; he’s going to try to reverse them,” Bray says.

The only issue Bray foresees is if the EPA slows down and doesn’t do its required registration review of various pesticides. If this occurs, activists will sue the EPA and the courts could decide that a pesticide is no longer legal to use in the U.S.

One of Trump’s main priorities will be tax cuts, such as reducing the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%.

“He’s going to do things that basically help large corporations and large spenders,” Bray says. “He’s also going to do tax cuts that help really low earners.”

Bray says it is unlikely Trump will approve of any green industry tax credits, but he will also not aggressively push for the gas-to-electric transition.

Bray expects many of these changes to take effect by the end of 2025 because, by midterms, he will begin to lose political capital, as more moderate Republicans who need to run for re-election will have to separate themselves from him or face a primary in early 2026.

“If things are going really good and the economy’s booming and there’s been no global crisis, the Republicans will probably hold on to everything,” Bray says.

However, with their slight majority, Bray expects the House will return to the Democrats in the mid-terms.

Bray notes that blue states like California, New Jersey, and New York will try to roll out progressive policies at a local level in retaliation to Trump’s federal changes.

“This state legislative cycle is going to be the most difficult one we have ever operated it, at least in those blue states,” Bray says.

Bray predicts that in the second half of his presidency, Trump may pivot to the middle after achieving his key priorities.

“I’m hoping that he realizes that the best thing for everybody is to try to soften the tone and try to bring people back together instead of dividing us,” Bray says. “I’m just hopefully optimistic that he will do that towards the end of his term.”

Adapting to the Environment

Even though the weather is out of your control, it is necessary to be aware of the impact of warming temperatures across the globe, which has been increasing at an average rate of 0.11 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the Industrial Revolution.

“There’s every reason to believe that we’re going to continue to put more heat-trapping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, which will favor additional warming,” says Steve Vavrus, senior scientist and state climatologist at the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, based in Madison, Wisconsin. “Whether that expresses itself as global temperature increase every year in the next few years is hard to say. That depends more on other factors, such as whether we have an El Nino or a La Nina, whether there’s any big volcanic eruptions and things like this.”

These warming temperatures have a direct effect on the severity of several types of natural disasters.

“When it comes to say wildfires, we’re creating hotter and often drier conditions that are favorable for wildfires,” Vavrus says. “When it comes to hurricanes, we’re creating warmer ocean surface waters that provide fuel for hurricanes above and beyond what they already have. When it comes to heavy rainfalls, we’re putting more moisture into the atmosphere so that when weather conditions are suitable, we can wring out more rainfall.”

Vavrus says Hurricane Helene and Milton were good recent examples of this occurring as these hurricanes rapidly strengthened while passing over the warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

“These Category Four, Category Five hurricanes may become more common than they have been in the past, but the overall number of hurricanes may not increase,” Vavrus says.

Similarly, Vavrus expects more extreme rainfall in the future as physically warmer air can hold more moisture.

“If there’s more moisture in the air, a big, juicy, humid air mass, and a thunderstorm erupts that means that that thunderstorm has a lot more moisture to draw from to produce torrential rainfall,” Vavrus says.

Another possible concern is mild winters, which can confuse plants and lead to premature development.

“In the winter, the plants are tricked into thinking it’s spring, even though it may only be February, and then they’re very vulnerable to a subsequent cold wave,” Vavrus says.

Cold winters are also effective at killing off detrimental insects that harm plants, and if it doesn’t get cold enough for the winter kill-off, that can create real problems.

“I know certain types of tree beetles have become a nuisance in parts of the country because there’s just not enough extremely cold air anymore as there used to be to kill off those pests,” Vavrus says.

Vavrus says the trend toward more wildfires, more intense rainfalls and more extreme heat will likely continue. He says landscape companies should seek out heat tolerance in plants as well as those that can handle higher precipitation variability.

He says there’s evidence we’ll start seeing more flip-flops between extremely dry and wet conditions.

“That is more of a challenge because that means you have to adapt to two different types of changes instead of just one, but that’s important,” Vavrus says. “In Wisconsin, we’ve seen some dramatic examples of that, just in the last year and a half, going from very, very wet to very, very dry very quickly.”

Vavrus adds that landscape companies can help by preventing de-vegetation and soil erosion on properties. He says adding any sort of plant life helps and increasing canopies in cities can help offset the intensity of heat waves.

“Anything that any of us can do to reduce our carbon footprint is a good idea,” Vavrus says.

He encourages thinking about landscapes and plants like trees in the long term.

“It’s not just what’s a good climate for a certain tree species locally, but thinking ahead to what type of climate is going to exist in this location in 20, 30, 50 years during the lifetime of a tree,” Vavrus says.

This article was published in the Jan/Feb issue of the magazine. To read more stories from The Edge magazine, click here to subscribe to the digital edition.