Juniper Enters Aquatic Maintenance by Acquiring Central Florida Lake Management

What happened

Juniper Landscaping, a commercial landscaping company based in Fort Myers, Florida, acquired Central Florida Lake Management, Inc., which does business as Compass Environmental, the company announced on July 9, 2026. The deal was one of two announced together: Juniper also acquired Aquatic Weeds Inc., a St. Cloud, Florida, company founded in 2019 that specializes in mechanical aquatic weed removal and waterfront restoration. PE Professional, a private equity trade publication, reported that the two add-on acquisitions mark Juniper's entry into aquatic maintenance as a new service line. Financial terms were not disclosed, and neither company's owners were named.

The seller

Compass is headquartered in Clermont, near Orlando. It maintains ponds, lakes, and waterways, and its work extends into dredging, shoreline restoration, and related pond and lake management. It also takes on land-side environmental jobs, including erosion remediation and stabilization, turbid water treatment, wetland restoration, lot clearing, and gopher tortoise excavation.

The company now styles itself "Compass, A Juniper Company."

The buyer

Juniper provides commercial landscape installation and maintenance to homeowners' associations, commercial, government, and other customers from branches in states including Florida, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania. It reports more than 30 branches and more than 3,000 team members. Chief executive Brandon Duke bought the company from his father in 2016.

Juniper is a portfolio company of Bregal Partners, a New York private equity firm that made a platform investment in January 2022 alongside co-investor L Capital. Its earlier acquisitions under Bregal include Landscape Maintenance Professionals, a Tampa and Sarasota landscaping maintenance provider, in 2024, and Hilton Head Landscapes, a landscape maintenance and installation provider in South Carolina's Lowcountry, announced in May 2026.

Duke said of the two aquatic companies: "These businesses add meaningful depth in aquatic maintenance, mechanical weed removal and shoreline restoration – areas where we see strong demand from our customer base." Juniper said the acquisitions create "a scalable platform for expanding these capabilities across Florida."

What this means for aquatic management owners

The buyer here is not an aquatic specialist but a commercial landscaper, and its chief executive explained the deal by pointing at customers Juniper already serves: associations, commercial properties, and government clients. For pond and lake companies, that puts the landscape contractor working the same properties into the buyer set. Juniper bought two Central Florida operators with different specialties in one announcement, dredging and shoreline work in one and mechanical weed removal in the other, so neither had to cover the whole range on its own. Our guide to selling a landscaping business to private equity covers how sponsor-backed platforms approach add-ons. For an owner whose clients are also a large landscaper's clients, that shared customer base is what Juniper's chief executive pointed to when he explained the deal.

OffDeal is an advisory firm that helps lower-middle-market business owners sell with confidence. Reach out to learn more about our expertise with aquatic management businesses in Florida.

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Source: Business Wire - https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260709968275/en/Juniper-Landscaping-Expands-into-Aquatic-Maintenance-with-Acquisitions-of-Compass-Environmental-and-Aquatic-Weeds