Juniper Wades into Aquatic Maintenance with Two Florida Deals

Juniper Landscaping, a Bregal Partners-backed commercial landscaping company, has acquired Compass Environmental and Aquatic Weeds, two Central Florida providers of lake, pond and shoreline maintenance services. These two add-on acquisitions mark Juniper’s entry into aquatic maintenance as a new service line.

Compass Environmental, operating as Central Florida Lake Management, is an aquatic and land management provider serving property owners across Florida. The company maintains ponds, lakes and waterways and offers dredging, shoreline restoration and other lake and pond management services. Beyond routine aquatic maintenance, Compass performs ecological restoration, turbid water treatments, erosion remediation and stabilization, and gopher tortoise excavation. Compass is headquartered near Orlando in Clermont, Florida.Aquatic Weeds rounds out the pair with mechanical aquatic weed removal and waterfront restoration for homeowners, homeowners’ associations, businesses and government agencies across Central Florida. Using specialized workboat equipment, the company removes overgrown vegetation, pond weeds, and sediment from lakes, canals, and ponds to restore access and shoreline appearance.

Its core service is mechanical harvesting, a chemical-free method of removing aquatic vegetation that avoids disruption to wildlife habitats and aquatic life. Aquatic Weeds is also licensed to apply EPA-registered herbicide treatments and installs fountains, aeration systems and Aqua Thrusters to maintain water quality year-round. The company’s services are provided either as one-time cleanups or as part of monthly maintenance plans. Founded in 2019, Aquatic Weeds is headquartered in St. Cloud, Florida, roughly 25 miles southeast of Orlando.

Juniper Landscaping, the buyer, is a commercial landscaping company providing installation and maintenance services to homeowners’ associations, commercial, government and other clients across the Southeast. Operating branch locations throughout Florida, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Pennsylvania, the company ranks as the country’s 19th-biggest landscaping business. Juniper is headquartered in Fort Myers, Florida, and led by chief executive officer Brandon Duke.

The rationale is straightforward — depth in services Juniper’s customers already want. “We are thrilled to welcome Compass and Aquatic Weeds to Juniper. These businesses add meaningful depth in aquatic maintenance, mechanical weed removal and shoreline restoration – areas where we see strong demand from our customer base,” said Mr. Duke.

Mr. Duke has led Juniper as chief executive officer since 2016, when he acquired the company from his father after working in the family business beginning in 2008. Over roughly a decade at the helm, he has grown Juniper from a single location with about 20 employees to more than 30 branches across five states employing over 3,000 people.

That expansion has come partly by acquisition. Bregal Partners, alongside co-investor L Capital, made a platform investment in Juniper in January 2022, and under Bregal’s ownership the company has pursued an active add-on program: Davis Landscaping, a North Carolina-based provider of commercial landscaping maintenance and installation (2024); Landscape Maintenance Professionals, a commercial landscaping provider (2024); and Hilton Head Landscapes, a South Carolina-based landscape maintenance and installation provider serving the Lowcountry (2026). Both Compass Environmental and Aquatic Weeds were privately held ahead of the sale, and the sellers were not disclosed.

The market Juniper is entering is small but growing. The US lake and pond management services market sits at roughly $900 million, according to Verified Market Research, and is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of about 5.7% through the early 2030s. Aquatic vegetation control accounts for a sizable share of that demand, driven by the spread of invasive plant species that degrade water quality and choke recreational access. Providers compete on their mix of mechanical harvesting, herbicide application and biological control, with mechanical, chemical-free removal drawing interest as environmental scrutiny of herbicide use rises.

It is also a fragment of a far larger commercial landscaping market, which Technavio pegs at about $143 billion in the United States. Both markets remain fragmented and populated by small, family-run operators, a structure that has drawn private equity-backed platforms pursuing buy-and-build strategies to consolidate local providers and cross-sell services across shared customer bases such as homeowners’ associations.

For Juniper, the two deals turn that demand into an immediate foothold. Rather than build an aquatic maintenance arm from scratch, the company gains established crews and equipment it can cross-sell to the homeowners’ association, commercial and government clients it already serves, adding a recurring, service-based revenue stream alongside its project work.

The transactions also fit Juniper’s broader consolidation strategy. Compass and Aquatic Weeds are positioned as the base of a scalable aquatic maintenance platform that Juniper intends to extend across Florida and, over time, the wider Southeast — mirroring the geographic buy-and-build approach Bregal has backed since 2022. A fragmented market of small, local providers offers a runway of further add-on targets, and Juniper has said it continues to seek acquisitions that expand its reach, deepen density in existing markets and broaden its services.

Mr. Duke frames the two businesses as a base to build on. “Together, Compass Environmental and Aquatic Weeds create a scalable platform for expanding these capabilities across Florida and give Juniper additional ways to serve homeowners’ associations, commercial, government and other customers,” he said.

Bregal Partners is a New York-based private equity firm founded in 2012 that invests across three core verticals: consumer and multi-unit, food and beverage, and business services. The firm commits $20 million to $150 million of equity per transaction in companies generating $5 million to more than $75 million of EBITDA.