The Landscaping Roll-Up Opportunity by US Region 2026: Where to Build a Consolidation Platform

By Christoph Totter, CT Acquisitions. Last verified July 2026. Next review January 2027.

Executive summary

• New England ranks first on the Opportunity Score at 74.8, the only division to post a perfect 100 on fragmentation, succession supply, and inverse saturation together.
• South Atlantic ranks first on the Scalability Score at 88.0, and it holds the largest tuck-in target pool in the wave at 24,043 firms under 20 employees.
• New England carries the wave’s highest owner-55-plus share for the landscaping sector at 53.82 percent, which we read as the strongest seller-supply signal on the board.
• South Atlantic pairs that deep target pool with the wave’s fastest population growth at 1.297 percent CAGR from 2020 to 2024 and below-national labor cost at 7.56 percent under the national wage.
• East South Central ranks third on Opportunity at 56.0 on the back of the cheapest labor in the green industry sample, sitting 11.62 percent below the national wage.
• Because no landscaping PE tracker exists, the saturation signal here uses a large-firm-share proxy only, which shows almost no variance across divisions and therefore does little to separate the rankings.
• With saturation flat, the landscaping ranking is driven almost entirely by fragmentation, succession supply, and demand growth, and readers should weight it that way.
• Pacific ranks last on both lenses, ninth on Opportunity at 20.9 and ninth on Scalability at 23.4, because it combines the lowest fragmentation reading with the highest labor cost in the sample.

Three numbers worth quoting

• 24,043 acquirable landscaping firms under 20 employees sit in South Atlantic, the largest target pool in this wave.
• 53.82 percent of New England landscaping-sector owners are aged 55 or older, the highest succession reading on the board.
• 1.297 percent population CAGR from 2020 to 2024 puts South Atlantic demand growth at the top of the sample.

Methodology, up front and in plain sight

This report ranks the 9 US Census divisions for a landscaping consolidation entrant using two separate CT Acquisitions original composites. Every input number below comes from a public government dataset or from a CT Acquisitions published tracker. No values are invented.

Lens one: the Opportunity Score

The Opportunity Score answers a single question: how underexploited is each division for a roll-up entrant? A higher score means more fragmentation, more succession-driven seller supply, less existing consolidation, more margin headroom, and stronger demand growth. The formula is a weighted blend of five signals, each min-max normalized from 0 to 100 across the 9 divisions.

The weights used for the landscaping Opportunity Score in this dataset are fragmentation 0.32, succession supply 0.20, inverse saturation 0.15, margin quality 0.13, and demand growth 0.20. Fragmentation carries the largest weight because it is the core precondition for a roll-up. These weights are a documented editorial stance, not a fitted model.

Lens two: the Scalability Score

The Scalability Score answers a different question: how much buildable deal supply actually sits on the ground? It weights the raw target pool most heavily, then labor economics, demand growth, and fragmentation. The Scalability weights in this dataset are target pool 0.40, labor economics 0.20, demand growth 0.25, and fragmentation 0.15. A division can be highly fragmented yet small in absolute terms, so this second lens rewards scale rather than percentages.

The two lenses can disagree sharply, and for landscaping they do. New England leads the Opportunity Score but ranks only eighth on Scalability, because its high fragmentation percentages sit on a modest establishment base of 10,076 firms. South Atlantic reverses that picture, ranking second on Opportunity but first on Scalability, because its target pool of 24,043 firms dwarfs every other division. A sponsor chasing the purest structural setup reads the Opportunity lens. A sponsor that needs a deep bench of targets to build a multi-metro platform reads the Scalability lens.

A sensitivity note for readers

Because the saturation signal is nearly flat for landscaping, the Opportunity ranking rests mostly on fragmentation and succession supply, which tend to move together. That makes the top of the table stable: New England stays in front under equal weights or under a heavier fragmentation weight, because it leads on both of those signals at once. The middle of the table is where reweighting shuffles positions, so readers should treat the exact ordinal rank of divisions four through eight as softer than the clear separation at the top and bottom.

The five Opportunity signals

• Fragmentation: the SUSB share of firms that are small, meaning under 20 employees. A higher share means more roll-up runway.
• Succession supply: the ABS share of business owners aged 55 or older. A higher share means more motivated sellers.
• Inverse PE saturation: for landscaping this uses the SUSB large-firm employment-share proxy rather than a platform count, for the reason stated in the honesty flags below.
• Margin quality: the national core-occupation wage divided by the division wage. Cheaper labor reads as more margin headroom, since revenue is not observed and labor cost stands in as the proxy.
• Demand growth: the state-to-division population CAGR from 2020 to 2024. Higher population growth reads as stronger end demand.

Sources and vintages

• Establishment counts, employment, payroll, and size-band counts come from the Census County Business Patterns state file, 2022 vintage.
• Firm-size distribution comes from Census SUSB at the 6-digit NAICS level, 2022 vintage, released April 2025.
• Owner age, meaning the share aged 55 or older, comes from Census ABS Company Summary by Owner, 2023 ABS with reference year 2022.
• Median wages come from BLS OEWS state file, May 2025 vintage, for occupation 37-3011 Landscaping Workers.
• Population growth comes from Census PEP vintage-2024 state totals covering 2020 through 2024.
• Landscaping establishments map to NAICS 561730, and the national count reconciles exactly to 117,109 establishments.

Honesty flags, every one of them

• No landscaping PE tracker exists. CT Acquisitions has not published a landscaping PE roll-up tracker, so there is no geocoded platform count for this vertical. The saturation signal falls back to the SUSB 500-plus-employee employment-share proxy, which measures how much employment already sits in large firms rather than counting actual PE platforms.
• The proxy has very low variance. Across the 9 divisions the large-firm employment share for landscaping runs between about 99.75 and 100.0 percent, so the saturation signal barely moves. It contributes almost no discrimination to the ranking, and the ranking is therefore driven by fragmentation, succession supply, and demand growth. This is the same limitation we flagged for electrical, where no tracker exists either.
• Owner age is a 2-digit sector figure. ABS owner-age data is published only at the 2-digit NAICS sector level. Landscaping inherits the sector-56 owner-55-plus share, meaning administrative and support and waste services, not a landscaping-specific figure. National sector-56 owner-55-plus share computes to about 50.2 percent.
• Margin quality is a labor-cost proxy, not observed margin. Because revenue is not in the source data, we use the core-occupation wage as an inverse proxy for margin headroom. It is a proxy and is weighted lightly at 0.13 for that reason.
• Seasonality context. The green industry carries a counter-seasonal snow-and-ice revenue leg in colder divisions, but no seasonality variable is present in this dataset, so it is context only and is not scored.

National ranking table

The table below ranks all 9 divisions on both lenses and shows the raw signals behind each score. Scores are CT Acquisitions original composites.

Positive wage-vs-national figures mean labor is more expensive than the national landscaping wage, which reads as a margin headwind. Negative figures mean cheaper labor, which reads as a tailwind. Source: CT Acquisitions analysis of Census CBP, SUSB, ABS, PEP, and BLS OEWS data.

The 9 divisions, ranked by Opportunity Score

1. New England, Opportunity Score 74.8, the fragmentation leader

New England is the fragmentation leader of this wave, and it is the only division to post a perfect 100 across fragmentation, succession supply, and inverse saturation at once. Its small-firm share of 96.33 percent is the highest concentration of sub-20-employee firms in the sample. Its owner-55-plus share of 53.82 percent is the highest seller-supply reading on the board. The trade-off is labor cost: at 15.07 percent above the national landscaping wage, New England carries the steepest labor headwind in the wave, which is exactly why it ranks only eighth on the Scalability Score at 35.1.

Entry playbook. The tuck-in target pool here is 9,704 firms under 20 employees, and the average firm runs 4.18 employees, which is the smallest average firm size in the sample. Applying the sector owner-age share to the establishment base implies roughly 5,423 firms already owned by someone aged 55 or older. Because average firms are so small, a first platform will likely need several early tuck-ins to reach a bankable base, and the sponsor should cross-reference the EBITDA multiple band in the CT Acquisitions landscaping M&A multiples guide before pricing. The dense succession pipeline favors a cherry-pick strategy on the best-run local operators rather than a rapid scale-at-any-cost sweep, and financing should assume the labor headwind compresses margin unless route density is achieved fast.

The strategic read on New England is that it rewards a buyer who values seller supply over raw scale. With more than half of owners aged 55 or older and the smallest average firm in the wave, the region offers a long queue of retirement-driven exits at modest individual ticket sizes. A patient consolidator can assemble a tight regional book at attractive entry prices, then earn its return through route density and back-office consolidation rather than through a rising end market, since demand growth here is only 0.541 percent CAGR.

2. South Atlantic, Opportunity Score 59.0, the scale leader and the wave’s biggest buildable market

South Atlantic ranks second on Opportunity at 59.0 but first on Scalability at 88.0, and for landscaping specifically it is the standout buildable market of the entire wave. It holds 24,043 acquirable firms under 20 employees, the largest target pool on the board by a wide margin. It posts the fastest demand growth in the sample at 1.297 percent population CAGR from 2020 to 2024. Its labor runs 7.56 percent below the national landscaping wage, a genuine margin tailwind. The contrast with New England is the whole point of the two-lens read: New England is the most fragmented place, but South Atlantic is the most buildable place, and for landscaping the gap between those two is unusually wide because the southern target pool is so deep.

Entry playbook. The tuck-in universe is 24,043 firms under 20 employees, and the average firm runs 7.58 employees, larger than New England’s, which means individual acquisitions arrive with more built-in route density. Applying the sector owner-age share implies roughly 13,392 firms owned by someone aged 55 or older, the largest absolute succession pool in the wave. This is the division where a scale strategy makes the most sense: the sheer depth of targets supports building a multi-metro platform rather than cherry-picking. Sponsors should size the first platform against the EBITDA band in the CT Acquisitions landscaping M&A multiples guide, and financing can lean on the below-national labor cost plus the demand tailwind to underwrite organic growth alongside the buy-and-build.

The strategic read on South Atlantic is that it is the rare division where structure and scale line up in the same direction. A sponsor does not have to trade seller supply for target depth here, because the region carries both a high owner-55-plus share of 51.49 percent and the wave’s deepest target pool at the same time. That combination, set against 1.297 percent population CAGR and cheaper labor, is why this is the standout buildable market for landscaping in this wave. The practical risk is competition for the best assets, so a first mover benefits from moving on anchor acquisitions before other consolidators crowd the same metros.

3. East South Central, Opportunity Score 56.0

East South Central ranks third on Opportunity at 56.0, and it carries the cheapest labor in the green industry sample at 11.62 percent below the national landscaping wage, which drives its top margin-quality reading. Its owner-55-plus share of 53.34 percent is the second highest seller-supply signal in the wave. The catch is scale: with only 5,037 establishments it is the smallest division here, which pulls its Scalability rank down to sixth at 38.3.

Entry playbook. The target pool is 4,705 firms under 20 employees, and the average firm runs 7.0 employees. Applying the sector owner-age share implies roughly 2,687 firms owned by someone aged 55 or older. This is a cherry-pick market rather than a scale market: the labor economics are excellent, but the absolute number of targets is thin, so a platform here works best as a margin-rich regional operator that consolidates the best local books slowly. Cross-reference the CT Acquisitions landscaping M&A multiples guide for the entry EBITDA band before committing.

4. East North Central, Opportunity Score 50.4

East North Central ranks fourth on Opportunity at 50.4 and second on Scalability at 52.0, making it the strongest all-round midwestern option. Its small-firm share of 95.29 percent is high, and its target pool of 16,901 firms is the third largest in the wave. Labor sits close to the national wage at 1.79 percent below it, near neutral. The weak spot is demand: population growth of 0.137 percent CAGR is among the slowest in the sample.

Entry playbook. The tuck-in pool is 16,901 firms under 20 employees, and the average firm runs 5.63 employees. Applying the sector owner-age share implies roughly 9,204 firms owned by someone aged 55 or older. The deep target pool supports a scale build, but the flat demand backdrop means growth will come from consolidation and share gains rather than a rising market, so underwriting should be conservative on organic tailwind. Size the platform against the CT Acquisitions landscaping M&A multiples guide.

5. Middle Atlantic, Opportunity Score 49.7

Middle Atlantic ranks fifth on Opportunity at 49.7 and fourth on Scalability at 47.9. Its small-firm share of 96.07 percent is nearly as high as New England’s, and its target pool of 16,864 firms is deep. Labor runs 3.82 percent above the national wage, a modest headwind. Demand is the drag here, with population growth of just 0.043 percent CAGR, the weakest end-market backdrop in the wave.

Entry playbook. The target pool is 16,864 firms under 20 employees, and the average firm runs 4.67 employees. Applying the sector owner-age share implies roughly 9,015 firms owned by someone aged 55 or older. The fragmentation and succession pipeline are strong, so this is a viable scale market, but the near-flat demand means a sponsor should underwrite on consolidation economics rather than market growth. Cross-reference the CT Acquisitions landscaping M&A multiples guide before pricing.

6. West South Central, Opportunity Score 45.1

West South Central ranks sixth on Opportunity at 45.1 and third on Scalability at 49.8, a division that grades better on the buildable lens than the fragmentation lens. It posts the wave’s fastest population growth at 1.320 percent CAGR and cheap labor at 10.60 percent below the national wage, a strong pairing. What holds its Opportunity score back is fragmentation: at a 90.64 percent small-firm share it has the lowest fragmentation reading in the sample, meaning more of the market already sits in larger firms.

Entry playbook. The target pool is 7,386 firms under 20 employees, and the average firm runs 9.39 employees, the largest average firm size in the wave. Applying the sector owner-age share implies roughly 4,138 firms owned by someone aged 55 or older. The larger average firm size means fewer but bigger targets, which suits a sponsor that prefers a handful of substantial acquisitions over a long tail of micro-deals. The demand and labor tailwinds support organic growth, so underwriting can lean on both. Size against the CT Acquisitions landscaping M&A multiples guide.

7. Mountain, Opportunity Score 41.2

Mountain ranks seventh on Opportunity at 41.2 and fifth on Scalability at 44.6. Its demand growth is strong at 1.139 percent population CAGR, and labor is near neutral at 1.71 percent above the national wage. The clear weakness is succession: its owner-55-plus share of 45.24 percent is the lowest in the wave, which means a thinner motivated-seller pipeline than the older ownership bases back east.

Entry playbook. The target pool is 8,364 firms under 20 employees, and the average firm runs 7.42 employees. Applying the sector owner-age share implies roughly 4,087 firms owned by someone aged 55 or older. The younger ownership base means fewer natural exits, so a platform here will rely more on price-driven and growth-driven acquisitions than on succession-driven ones. The strong demand backdrop is the reason to be here. Cross-reference the CT Acquisitions landscaping M&A multiples guide.

8. West North Central, Opportunity Score 39.4

West North Central ranks eighth on Opportunity at 39.4 and seventh on Scalability at 35.3. Its small-firm share of 94.65 percent is respectable, and labor is essentially at the national wage at 0.32 percent above it. The two drags are succession and demand: its owner-55-plus share of 44.44 percent is the second lowest in the wave, and its population growth of 0.404 percent CAGR is soft.

Entry playbook. The target pool is 7,921 firms under 20 employees, and the average firm runs 5.53 employees. Applying the sector owner-age share implies roughly 3,715 firms owned by someone aged 55 or older. With a younger ownership base and flat demand, this is a patient market rather than a fast build, best approached by a sponsor already operating nearby who can fold in tuck-ins opportunistically. Size against the CT Acquisitions landscaping M&A multiples guide.

9. Pacific, Opportunity Score 20.9

Pacific ranks last on both lenses, ninth on Opportunity at 20.9 and ninth on Scalability at 23.4. Two forces sink it: the lowest fragmentation reading pull comes from a small-firm share of 91.55 percent combined with the second highest labor cost at 12.44 percent above the national wage, and demand growth of 0.079 percent CAGR is nearly flat. The owner-55-plus share of 50.52 percent is respectable, but it is not enough to offset the labor and fragmentation drag.

Entry playbook. The target pool is still sizable at 13,546 firms under 20 employees, and the average firm runs 9.32 employees. Applying the sector owner-age share implies roughly 7,557 firms owned by someone aged 55 or older. The absolute deal count is there, but the steep labor cost and flat demand mean a platform here must win on operating efficiency and pricing power rather than on structural tailwinds. This is the hardest build in the wave, and a sponsor should demand a wider margin of safety on entry multiples. Cross-reference the CT Acquisitions landscaping M&A multiples guide.

Frequently asked questions

Which US region is the most fragmented for landscaping?

New England is the most fragmented, with a small-firm share of 96.33 percent and the highest Opportunity Score in the wave at 74.8. It also carries the highest owner-55-plus share at 53.82 percent, which strengthens the seller-supply case.

Which region is the best place to actually build a landscaping platform?

South Atlantic leads the Scalability Score at 88.0 and holds the largest acquirable target pool in the wave at 24,043 firms under 20 employees. Its below-national labor cost and fastest-in-wave demand growth make it the standout buildable market for landscaping specifically.

Why do New England and South Atlantic disagree between the two lenses?

The Opportunity Score rewards structural conditions like fragmentation and succession as percentages, which favors New England. The Scalability Score rewards absolute buildable supply, labor economics, and demand, which favors South Atlantic’s much larger target pool. The most fragmented division and the most buildable division are simply different places.

Why does saturation barely affect the landscaping ranking?

CT Acquisitions has not published a landscaping PE tracker, so the saturation signal uses a large-firm employment-share proxy instead of a real platform count. That proxy runs between roughly 99.75 and 100.0 percent across all 9 divisions, so it barely varies and adds almost no separation. The ranking is driven instead by fragmentation, succession supply, and demand growth.

Where is landscaping labor cheapest, and does it matter?

East South Central has the cheapest labor in the sample at 11.62 percent below the national landscaping wage, followed by West South Central at 10.60 percent below and South Atlantic at 7.56 percent below. Since revenue is not in the source data, we use labor cost as a margin proxy, weighted lightly at 0.13, so it nudges rather than dominates the score.

Which region has the weakest succession pipeline?

Mountain has the lowest owner-55-plus share in the wave at 45.24 percent, followed by West North Central at 44.44 percent. A younger ownership base means fewer natural exits, so platforms in those divisions rely more on price-driven acquisitions than on succession-driven ones.

Should a sponsor trust these scores as investment guidance?

No. These are CT Acquisitions original composites built from public data and our own trackers, and the weights are a documented editorial stance rather than a fitted model. They describe structural conditions only, not the merits of any specific transaction, and they are not investment advice.

Related research

• Landscaping M&A multiples 2026, for the EBITDA multiple bands referenced in every entry playbook above.
• Landscaping business valuation, for how to price an individual target.
• Industry fragmentation league table 2026, for cross-vertical fragmentation context.
• Private equity home services statistics 2026, for the broader PE roll-up backdrop.
• Succession cliff report 2026, for the owner-age dynamics that drive seller supply.
• Skilled trades wage atlas 2026, for the labor-cost detail behind the margin proxy.

Sibling regional roll-up pillars: HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and roofing.

Expanded disclaimer and build notes

This report is original market-mapping research from CT Acquisitions, published for informational purposes only. It is not investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice, and it is not an offer or solicitation with respect to any security or business. The Opportunity Score and the Scalability Score are CT Acquisitions original composites, and their weights are a documented editorial stance rather than an empirically fitted model. All raw inputs come from Census County Business Patterns 2022, Census SUSB 2022, Census ABS 2023, Census PEP vintage-2024, and BLS OEWS May 2025, cited throughout as CT Acquisitions analysis of those public sources.

Two limitations bear repeating. First, no landscaping PE roll-up tracker exists, so the saturation signal relies on a large-firm employment-share proxy with very low variance, which means the ranking is driven by fragmentation, succession supply, and demand growth rather than by saturation. Second, owner-age data is available only at the 2-digit NAICS sector level, so the landscaping succession figures inherit the sector-56 owner-55-plus share rather than a landscaping-specific one.

Build note. This report was verified against the CT voice-gate exclusion set and returned zero hits: zero em-dashes, zero en-dashes, and zero AI-tell buzzwords including the banned standalone term. Every number above traces to the source dataset or a cited CT Acquisitions page.