Bland Landscaping Acquires Aquatics Firm Clear Lakes and Wetland Services

What happened

Bland Landscaping, a commercial landscape company based in Apex, North Carolina, and backed by Vesterra Capital Partners, acquired Clear Lakes and Wetland Services (CLAWS), a lake and pond management company in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The deal was announced on August 20, 2026, together with Bland's acquisition of Charleston Grounds Management (CGM), a Charleston landscaping company founded by Lee Hickman. Vesterra partner Matt Kunz said the two deals "reflect Bland's success partnering with established, founder-led businesses in great markets." Financial terms were not disclosed.

The seller

Ken Robinson founded CLAWS, which provides aquatics services to commercial customers in Myrtle Beach, mostly homeowners associations. Its core work is lake and pond management built on aquatic weed control, along with fountain installation and maintenance, fountain sales, fish stocking, and wetland planting, including floating wetlands that filter pollution out of ponds. It also produces bathymetric surveys, using sonar to chart the bottom of a lake or pond and show where sediment has built up. The company has more than 34 years of experience in that work and is a member of the South Carolina Aquatic Plant Management Society.

The announcement did not say whether Robinson stays with the business or whether the CLAWS name continues.

The buyer

Bland has operated since 1976. It is a regional commercial and estate landscape management and contracting business best known for horticultural landscaping and grounds management, and it also cares for memorial gardens, parks, and estate grounds and provides stormwater and pond management. It has 17 branch locations across the Southeast, ranks No. 37 on Landscape Management's 2026 LM150 list of the industry's top revenue-generating firms, and is led by CEO Kurt Bland.

Myrtle Beach is not new ground for Bland. In August 2025, Kurt Bland wrote about visiting the company's Myrtle Beach facility and its team there, crediting them with "the success of our launch into this market." Bland's coastal service now runs from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Georgetown, South Carolina. CGM, the other company in the announcement, takes Bland into Charleston, which Bland calls its newest market.

Comvest Private Equity, the firm since renamed Vesterra, recapitalized Bland in December 2024. At that point Bland had completed seven acquisitions since 2019 and ran 12 branch locations. Writing on LinkedIn after this announcement, Kurt Bland said the company has "thoughtfully acquired 11 companies over the last seven years," adding that "each and every one of them is bespoke because no two companies are created the same." Vesterra is a West Palm Beach, Florida, investment firm managing about $1.9 billion in assets and focused on control investments in the services economy.

Aquatics as its own acquisition category

Aquatics runs through both halves of the announcement: CGM lists it next to maintenance, enhancements, irrigation, and flowers, and Kurt Bland's statement named "landscaping and aquatics capabilities in Charleston and Myrtle Beach" as what the two deals expand. He has also been direct about what he buys: "I am only interested in buying commercial landscape management and aquatic focused companies in the southeastern United States." Owners weighing that kind of buyer can read our guide on selling a landscaping business to private equity.

What this means for landscaping owners

CLAWS is a single-market specialist whose customers are mostly HOAs, and its buyer is a landscape company that was already working the same coast for the same kind of customer, with a pond service of its own. For an owner running a lake, pond, or fountain business, that makes the landscaper serving the same communities a proven buyer, not only a rival for the contract.

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

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Source: Bland Landscaping - https://blandlandscaping.com/2026/08/bland-landscaping-co-expands-in-south-carolina/