With the last portion of 2025 flying by, many landscape professionals are setting their sights on 2026. As the new year approaches, this is a prime time to reflect on lessons learned and determine what areas of the business should receive the most focus moving forward.
“As we scale, the business constantly changes and our managing director works closely with the owners to determine the systems, equipment, software and people that need to level up to help the business to meet its new objectives,” says Andrew McCurry, owner of Father Nature Landscapes, based in Birmingham, Alabama.
Strengthening Core Operations and Leadership
Joe Chiellini, VP of Florida for Yardnique and founder of ASI Landscape Management, based in Tampa, Florida, says their focus for the new year all comes down to operational excellence because this is the differentiating factor when landscape companies are all using the same trucks, tools, and face the same labor issues.
Justin White, owner of K&D Landscaping, Inc., based in Watsonville, California, says operational efficiency is one of their focuses for 2026.
“I think you have to actively fight against the bureaucracy of a growing company,” White says. “It’s just innate human behavior to put in more controls so you feel like you have control of the business as it grows, but the truth is you have to build the right team and trust your team. As you grow, you have to relinquish and give away more power, more responsibility, more decision-making capacity.”
Even this year, K&D Landscaping tested out not having any meetings for the month of February. In March, they only brought back the meetings they felt were highly valuable.
“That’s an example of a bit of an extreme process that we went through to just ensure that the meetings that we have are there for purpose and intentionality, and they’re not just there to have a meeting,” White says. “I would say we brought back about 80% of the meetings. We removed 20% of meetings after the February no-meeting month. It was a very interesting test.”
Similarly, Ashly Paladino, COO of Sun Valley Landscaping, based in Omaha, Nebraska, says one of their major priorities will be focused on quality standards and how to measure them.
Barry Schneider, president of Surrounds Landscaping, based in Sterling, Virginia, and Bryan Christiansen, CEO of Mariani Premier Group, based in Lake Bluff, Illinois, are both utilizing technology to move away from old-fashioned practices.
“At the Mariani Premier Group, we are always learning and sharing best practices across our companies, which inevitably leads to the sunsetting of old ways of working that are not best practice anymore,” Christiansen says.
White says they view themselves as an AI-first company where they will ask if AI can streamline any process before considering any other option.
White says they’ve also learned this year the importance of growing their leaders’ capacity to prevent burnout.
“When your leader is burnt out, everyone below them becomes very stressed and very scarcity mindset focused, and so they’re not focused on growth,” White says. “They’re focused on saving their job because they feel as if their job may be in jeopardy because of the way the leader talks.”
White says it’s important to invest in training your leaders and send them to conferences so they can learn from others, return inspired and come back with a higher leadership capacity.
Driving Efficiency and Growth
Another major priority for many landscape companies is fine-tuning their growth strategies.
Paladino says they are working on developing a high-performing sales team, starting with their sales processes and training systems.
“We do not have a sticky sales process – we’ve always relied on the individual skill set and contributions from our sales team, and each of them does the process differently,” Paladino says. “We are working towards developing this so that we can train and implement it, and gather feedback to tweak as we go.”
McCurry says his team will review their most profitable jobs, worst jobs, favorite jobs, best customers, and look for patterns to help them select which jobs they should pursue and which jobs they should avoid in the future.
“This helps when leads are too many and gives us the focus when we need to turn away work due to capacity issues,” McCurry says.
Schneider says they are planning to focus on growing their maintenance department next year.
“The inconsistencies related to weather, local jurisdiction requirements (engineering/permits), which can delay starting a project sometimes five to six months, along with many other factors associated with installing large complex landscape projects, have proven to be a factor in our success,” Schneider says. “We are looking to increase our maintenance-to-install ratio.”
White says that as they reach market density in their area, they are looking to either geographically expand or invest in their sales team to drive new sales. He says they are also looking to increase their revenue per employee.
Maintaining Client and Employee Satisfaction
Finally, company owners have expressed a continued focus on customer satisfaction and company culture. Christiansen says their founder, Frank Mariani, only has two commandments: do what is best for their clients and do what is best for their associates.
“This means staying focused on the activities that will drive client satisfaction and loyalty, while simultaneously building the programs that allow our associates to do their best work for our clients,” Christiansen says. “In 2026 and beyond, focusing on these two commandments will always be a top priority for ongoing improvement.”
Paladino notes that your culture will drive your performance as you focus on your core priorities. White adds you need to ensure your culture is growing faster than your revenue.
“We had to exit some people from the organization, and bring on some different people, because not everyone is going to grow with the company as you scale,” White says. “We’ve had to do new things, whether it’s rolling out different operating processes, or it’s communicating our culture in a different way to our team members, or holding a monthly leadership training to ensure that everybody’s staying up with the company’s growth. Those are some of those areas that we’ve invested in to make sure that we protect the culture.”
