Home Improvement

“Research, Industry News, Analysis and Practical Information”: Lawn & Landscape Lands at No. 6 on HG HomeClub’s Ranking of the 25 Most Influential Publications and Media Platforms Serving Home Improvement, Home Services and Outdoor Living

By HG HomeClub September 1, 2026 20 min read

The monthly publication serving the business behind landscaping and lawn care now connects the Top 100, executive education, technology programming and State of the Industry reporting, and is recognized as the sixth most influential media brand serving the trades

August 29, 2026 – HG HomeClub today named Lawn & Landscape the No. 6 media brand on its ranking of the 25 most influential publications and media platforms serving home improvement, home services and outdoor living. The placement recognizes a publication that has consistently treated landscaping and lawn care as what they are: a major contractor-led economy whose owners must manage equipment, people, pricing, properties, technology, weather, customer expectations and growth at the same time.

The ranking evaluates the publications, magazines, digital platforms and media brands that professional contractors, remodelers, home service operators and outdoor living companies use to make better decisions. Lawn & Landscape placed No. 6 in a field of 25 because it combines field-relevant coverage with owner-level reporting, market intelligence, a major company benchmark, executive programming and a sustained focus on the operational questions that shape landscape and lawn-care businesses.

A curated media platform built on “informed transparency” turns its attention to the publications the trades actually rely on

HG HomeClub is a curated media platform serving homeowners, contractors and the broader home improvement, home services and outdoor living economy. Its work is organized around informed transparency: the principle that better decisions follow from better information, and that decision-makers deserve to see the standards behind a conclusion rather than being handed a result without context.

That principle is why HG HomeClub ranks the trade press itself. A contractor publication matters when it helps owners understand what is changing in the market, separate operational signal from product noise, study how peer companies are responding and bring that learning back to a team. The work is especially important in outdoor services, where the decisions that determine performance are interconnected: labor affects capacity, equipment affects productivity, weather affects scheduling, pricing affects margin, and customer expectations affect whether a company can retain profitable work.

Lawn & Landscape has built its relevance by reporting across those connections. Its coverage ranges from landscape maintenance, lawn care, design-build construction, irrigation, equipment and plant health to leadership, profitability, mergers and acquisitions, workforce management, company culture, technology and market outlooks. It covers the contractor’s world not as a collection of isolated specialties, but as a business system.

The criteria behind the list: usefulness to owners, not traffic, followers or the age of a masthead

Placement on the list was determined against six standards: industry influence and professional recognition; practical value to contractors and company owners; quality and depth of original content; reach among professional decision-makers; strength of rankings, research, events and recognition programs; and the ability to educate and connect the contractor community.

The list is explicitly not a ranking of website traffic, social media followers, advertising volume or publication age. Longevity and circulation were considered, but were not permitted to automatically outweigh a publication’s usefulness to the contractors it serves. Specialized publications were assessed within the context of the markets they serve, on the reasoning that a title with deep authority in a single trade can matter more to the people in that trade than a broader title with a larger audience and a shallower relationship.

Applied to Lawn & Landscape, those standards reward a platform with strong authority among landscape-company owners and an unusually complete suite of business resources for the green industry. Its Top 100 gives the market a common benchmark. Its State of the Industry reporting supplies data and context for decisions owners must make before the season begins. Its executive summit and technology conference create a setting where the industry’s larger operators and growth-minded leaders can compare strategies. And its monthly, digital and event formats keep the conversation active throughout the year.

A business publication for an industry that happens outdoors

Lawn & Landscape is a business-to-business publication serving landscape contractors, lawn-care companies, suppliers, manufacturers and executives across the professional green industry. It is owned by GIE Media, an Ohio-based business media company with a portfolio of brands serving specialized professional markets.

The publication’s editorial premise is visible in the way it frames its work: it provides research, industry news, analysis and practical information to help business owners grow their companies. That is a more demanding assignment than simply reporting on new equipment or landscaping trends. A landscape company’s success depends on operational choices made long before a crew arrives at a property, including which customers to serve, how to schedule work, how to recruit and retain people, whether to expand a service line, how to invest in equipment and technology, and how to respond when conditions in the market change.

Lawn & Landscape reaches those questions through a monthly print edition, digital reporting, newsletters, podcasts, webinars, videos and live programming. That platform range is not ornamental. The seasonal nature of outdoor services requires both long-range planning and quick response. An owner may need a detailed report to support annual planning, a weekly update on an acquisition or equipment development, and a timely webinar on labor, culture or technology during the active season.

The publication covers a professional market that operates at substantial scale. But its core usefulness is not dependent on size. It is designed for owners and operators who need to make a lawn-care route more productive, improve retention, evaluate a technology platform, price a landscape-maintenance contract, understand a change in regulation or decide whether growth should come through organic expansion, acquisition or specialization.

The Top 100 is the green industry’s operating benchmark

The Lawn & Landscape Top 100 is the franchise that most clearly explains the publication’s authority. The annual ranking identifies leading landscaping and lawn-care companies and provides a shared reference point for an industry with a wide range of operating models – from recurring residential lawn care and commercial maintenance to installation, irrigation, tree care, snow operations and design-build work.

A company ranking matters only when it becomes useful beyond the companies named on it. The Top 100 functions that way because it turns a large and often fragmented market into a benchmark owners can study. It gives operators a way to observe how businesses scale, where service models are concentrating, how market leadership shifts and what kinds of companies are setting the pace in landscape and lawn care.

Like many contractor rankings, the Top 100 naturally reflects the scale of the companies that participate and qualify. That is a limitation worth stating plainly. Revenue and company size can reveal capacity and market position, but they do not by themselves measure culture, customer satisfaction, craft quality, leadership or the health of a team. Lawn & Landscape strengthens the ranking’s value by surrounding it with company profiles, industry analysis, executive education and reporting on the forces – labor, technology, acquisitions, pricing and customer demand – that affect companies at every size.

The Top 100 is not just an article that arrives once a year. It anchors an executive community. The ranking’s most-read status reflects its practical role for owners, suppliers, manufacturers and strategic partners: it identifies the companies that define the upper range of the market while giving everyone else a way to study the systems, choices and trends shaping professional growth.

The executive summit turns a ranking into a working room

The Lawn & Landscape Top 100 Executive Summit & Awards Ceremony is the live extension of the ranking. The event convenes leaders of the industry’s largest landscape companies for business education, peer networking and the annual Top 100 awards dinner. Its purpose is not simply to celebrate placement. It gives executives a concentrated setting to examine the questions that become more complex as companies grow: hiring, leadership, technology, acquisitions, culture, systems and the pace of change in the market.

The 2026 program was scheduled for July 21 – 22 in Scottsdale, Arizona. The setting brings the industry’s major operators together around the very issues that the monthly magazine and digital platform follow throughout the year. At scale, landscaping becomes a management discipline as much as a field discipline. Companies need systems that can preserve quality while routes, crews, markets and service offerings expand. The summit gives those leaders a forum for direct comparison and practical exchange.

The Lawn & Landscape Technology Conference is held alongside the executive summit and focuses on technology, business systems and innovation. Its integration with the Top 100 event is strategic. Technology decisions do not belong in a separate conversation from business growth. Route optimization, customer-relationship management, field reporting, equipment telematics, artificial intelligence, marketing systems and workforce tools all become meaningful only when they improve a company’s ability to serve customers, deploy people effectively and protect margin.

The pairing reflects a larger editorial truth: landscapers do not adopt technology for technology’s sake. They adopt it to solve operational problems. A business owner deciding whether to automate a workflow or add a platform needs to understand not only the product but also implementation, employee adoption, data quality, customer impact and return on effort. Lawn & Landscape positions technology in that broader operating context.

State of the Industry reporting gives owners a clearer view before they set the next season in motion

The annual State of the Industry program is one of Lawn & Landscape’s most useful contributions to the market. The publication releases a report examining projected trends and the financial health of the industry, then extends the work through webinars in which contractors and industry voices discuss what has happened, what has not worked and what operators should prepare for next.

The 2025 report captured a market in which confidence and caution existed at the same time. More respondents anticipated selling their business within the following decade than in the prior report, while more than half said they had been approached about selling in the preceding 12 months. The results also showed that concerns around raising prices, consumer confidence, immigration regulations and tariffs remained material operating issues. The point of this kind of reporting is not to predict a single future. It is to give owners a grounded basis for planning in a market where the next decision may involve pricing, labor, succession, capital investment or an offer to sell.

Lawn & Landscape described the annual webinar’s agenda in the practical language its audience expects: a review of the past year, private equity and M&A activity, labor solutions, company culture, government regulations and an outlook for the year ahead. The 2025 program asked direct questions: Is private equity’s interest in the industry good, bad or somewhere in the middle? Can companies grow and make deals organically? What can leaders do to attract and retain the right employees? How should operators respond when regulation, tariffs or immigration changes affect their work?

In a January 2026 editor’s note, Brian Horn, editor of Lawn & Landscape, wrote that the annual State of the Industry webinar brought together contributors with “a wealth of knowledge to share.” His takeaways did not reduce the market to a single trend. They included defining an ideal customer, preparing for workforce and documentation issues, and understanding that artificial intelligence, technology and private equity or mergers and acquisitions are likely to reshape the industry’s future.

This is where original reporting earns its place in an owner’s decision process. It can present unfavorable findings without treating them as a failure of the industry. A rise in concern about pricing pressure or an increase in owners contemplating a sale is not an editorial inconvenience. It is an operating fact. Lawn & Landscape treats those facts as material for better decisions.

The editorial team covers the business from its daily decisions outward

Lawn & Landscape is led editorially by Brian Horn, editor. The editorial operation also includes Jimmy Miller, assistant editor, and Kim Lux, assistant editor. Their team reports on the news, trends, business practices, products and research that landscape and lawn-care professionals use to manage their companies.

The roles matter because the industry does not move according to one editorial beat. A new mower, a software acquisition, a branch expansion, a labor-development program, a succession decision and a shift in consumer demand may all affect the same company in different ways. Lawn & Landscape covers the distinct pieces while retaining the owner’s perspective: what does this development mean for how a business should operate?

That perspective is visible in the platform’s reporting on consolidation. The State of the Industry discussion does not treat mergers and acquisitions as a distant finance story. It asks how owners should evaluate potential partners, whether organic growth remains realistic and how businesses of varying size can preserve their values and people through a transaction. The same approach applies to labor, technology, equipment, and regulation. The editorial work begins with the market but returns to the decision-maker.

The platform reaches beyond the magazine without losing the contractor’s point of view

Lawn & Landscape maintains a monthly magazine alongside a frequent digital publishing schedule, dozens of e-newsletters, webinars, podcasts, social channels and conference programming. The publication’s multimedia model reflects how owners now consume professional information. A seasonal business cannot wait for one channel to provide every answer, and a contractor does not have time to search through fragmented sources when a problem needs attention.

The digital platform gives the publication room for immediate reporting on acquisitions, equipment introductions, company leadership moves, regulatory developments and market news. The magazine creates room for more considered analysis, company profiles and long-form coverage. Webinars bring experts and practitioners into direct conversation. The executive summit offers a peer setting for the industry’s larger companies. Together, the formats create a year-round information system rather than a publication whose value is confined to the day an issue arrives.

The platform’s recognition for editorial work reinforces that model. Lawn & Landscape received seven Turf & Ornamental Communicators Association awards in 2006, including three first-place awards, marking its 13th consecutive year of TOCA recognition at the time. In 2018, the publication received six awards from the American Society of Business Publication Editors, including regional Gold Awards for design. The record reflects editorial and visual standards that support the clarity of the information the platform delivers.

Its No. 6 placement recognizes the complete business resource for the green industry

Lawn & Landscape scored strongly on practical value to landscape-company owners, the strength of its Top 100 benchmark, its market reporting, its executive programming and its ability to connect business leadership with technical, equipment and field concerns. HG HomeClub assesses Lawn & Landscape as one of the most complete business resources available to landscaping and lawn-care contractors.

Its No. 6 placement also reflects the ranking’s cross-category discipline. The publication’s authority is concentrated in landscaping, lawn care and outdoor services. That concentration is valuable to the companies it serves, but it limits the platform’s direct relevance to indoor home-service businesses, remodeling specialists and narrow mechanical trades. Equipment and product coverage appropriately occupy meaningful editorial space, and the platform’s broad green-industry scope can provide less depth for a company focused exclusively on a single niche such as high-end outdoor design or irrigation.

The five titles above it occupy different structural positions. Qualified Remodeler leads residential remodeling through its legacy, Top 500 and owner-conference ecosystem. Roofing Contractor holds concentrated authority in roofing. Power100 operates across home improvement, home services and outdoor living through a cross-category leadership model. ACHR NEWS provides deep HVACR authority. Pro Remodeler bridges remodeling leadership, design and operations. Lawn & Landscape is unmatched in its particular territory: the business intelligence and professional connection that help green-industry companies grow responsibly.

The value of trusted green-industry media rises as the market becomes more complex

Landscape and lawn-care companies are operating in a market shaped by consolidation, labor constraints, pricing pressure, customer expectations, technology adoption and regulation. The work remains physical and local, but the decisions are increasingly strategic. An owner must know whether to add services, acquire a competitor, sell a business, deploy a new system, change a pricing model or invest in people before the next season makes the choice urgent.

That is why trade media matters more than it did when the role was limited to reporting product news. The contractor needs a platform that can connect equipment decisions to productivity, workforce decisions to service quality, technology decisions to operational discipline and market signals to the next business move. Lawn & Landscape has built its influence by doing that work across reporting, research, rankings and live education.

The publication’s central promise is practical information for owners who want to grow their companies. The market around that promise will continue to change. The need for a reliable platform that treats the green industry as a serious business community will not.

The complete ranking: HG HomeClub’s 25 most influential publications and media platforms serving home improvement, home services and outdoor living

About HG HomeClub

HG HomeClub is a curated media platform serving homeowners, contractors and the broader home improvement, home services and outdoor living economy. Built on a principle of informed transparency, HG HomeClub publishes rankings, research and editorial coverage that make the standards behind its conclusions visible, so that homeowners and professionals can judge the reasoning as well as the result. More information is available at Sources: hghomeclub.com.

About Lawn & Landscape

Lawn & Landscape is a B2B publication serving landscape contractors, lawn-care companies, suppliers, manufacturers and executives in the professional green industry. Owned by GIE Media, the publication delivers business, technical, equipment, market and workforce coverage through a monthly magazine, digital reporting, newsletters, podcasts, webinars, social media and live events. Its core programs include the Lawn & Landscape Top 100, the Top 100 Executive Summit & Awards Ceremony, the Lawn & Landscape Technology Conference and the annual State of the Industry report and webinar. Learn more at lawnandlandscape.com and follow Lawn & Landscape on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Sources: X.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is HG HomeClub?

HG HomeClub is a curated media platform serving homeowners, contractors and the broader home improvement, home services and outdoor living economy. Its work is built around informed transparency: readers should be able to see the standards and reasoning behind a ranking, recommendation or editorial conclusion. The platform curates useful industry information and publishes original rankings and editorial coverage intended to help decision-makers evaluate both an outcome and how it was reached. Its publication ranking assesses the organizations that contractors and company owners use to learn, operate, connect and prepare for changing market conditions.

What is the ranking that Lawn & Landscape placed sixth on?

Lawn & Landscape placed No. 6 on HG HomeClub’s ranking of the 25 most influential publications and media platforms serving home improvement, home services and outdoor living. The list evaluates the organizations that provide meaningful reporting, education, rankings, research, recognition, events and professional connection for contractor-led businesses. It includes broad industry platforms and specialized authorities. Lawn & Landscape earned its placement through its deep standing with landscape and lawn-care owners, its Top 100 benchmark, its State of the Industry reporting, its executive programming and its practical coverage of the business behind outdoor services.

How was the ranking determined?

HG HomeClub evaluated each organization using six standards: industry influence and professional recognition; practical value to contractors and company owners; quality and depth of original content; reach among professional decision-makers; strength of rankings, research, events and recognition programs; and the ability to educate and connect the contractor community. It is not a ranking of website traffic, social-media followers, advertising volume or publication age. Longevity and circulation were considered but were not allowed to outweigh usefulness and relevance automatically. Specialized titles were judged within their markets because deep authority in a single trade can be more meaningful to its professionals than broader, less focused coverage.

What is Lawn & Landscape?

Lawn & Landscape is a business-to-business publication for landscape contractors, lawn-care companies, suppliers, manufacturers and executives across the professional green industry. Owned by GIE Media, it covers business growth, profitability, hiring, culture, mergers and acquisitions, equipment, technology, turf, irrigation, plant health, maintenance and market developments. The platform publishes a monthly magazine and delivers additional coverage through its website, e-newsletters, podcasts, webinars, video, social channels and events. Its central franchises include the Top 100, the executive summit, technology programming and the annual State of the Industry report.

What is the Lawn & Landscape Top 100?

The Lawn & Landscape Top 100 is the publication’s annual ranking of leading landscape and lawn-care companies. It provides an industry benchmark that owners, suppliers, manufacturers and strategic partners use to understand the upper range of company scale and to study broader market trends. As with most company rankings, it naturally emphasizes participating businesses with meaningful scale, so it does not independently measure every dimension of a company’s quality, culture or customer experience. Lawn & Landscape supplements the ranking with profiles, reporting, data and executive education that put company results in the wider context of labor, technology, service models, acquisition activity and market conditions.

What is the Top 100 Executive Summit & Awards Ceremony?

The Lawn & Landscape Top 100 Executive Summit & Awards Ceremony is a leadership gathering for executives from the industry’s largest landscape companies. The event combines business education, peer networking and the annual Top 100 awards dinner. It is designed to help leaders examine growth, culture, systems, acquisitions, technology and other operating issues that become more complicated as a company expands. The 2026 event was scheduled for July 21 – 22 in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the associated Lawn & Landscape Technology Conference focuses on technology, business systems and innovation.

Who leads Lawn & Landscape’s editorial operation?

Brian Horn is editor of Lawn & Landscape. Jimmy Miller and Kim Lux serve as assistant editors. The team’s coverage reflects the multiple operating realities of the green industry, which includes field work, equipment, scheduling, weather exposure, customer retention, labor, pricing, technology, acquisitions and leadership. By covering news and products alongside business strategy and market reporting, Lawn & Landscape helps readers interpret developments through the practical question that matters most to an owner: what does this mean for running the company?

What is Lawn & Landscape’s State of the Industry program?

Lawn & Landscape’s State of the Industry program includes an annual report on industry trends and financial health, plus webinars that convene experts and operators around the year’s most consequential business questions. The 2025 report examined company-sale expectations, acquisition interest, labor, pricing, consumer confidence, immigration regulations and tariffs. The associated webinar addressed the past year’s performance, private equity and M&A, retention, culture, government regulations and the outlook for the next year. The program is valuable because it does not reduce market conditions to a single headline; it gives owners usable context for decisions about growth, hiring, pricing, succession and investment.

Why did Lawn & Landscape place at No. 6 rather than higher?

Lawn & Landscape scored highly for practical value to landscape-company owners, original market and business reporting, its Top 100 benchmark, executive education and its ability to connect green-industry professionals across print, digital and live formats. HG HomeClub views it as one of the most complete business resources for landscaping and lawn-care contractors. Its No. 6 placement reflects scope rather than quality: the publication’s authority is concentrated in landscaping, lawn care and outdoor services, so it is less directly useful to indoor home-service operators, remodelers and narrow mechanical trades. Within the business of professional landscaping and lawn care, Lawn & Landscape remains unmatched.