Everglades Environmental Care Joins Six-Brand Raise Landscaping Platform

What happened

Everglades Environmental Care, a commercial landscaping company based in Hialeah, Florida, is one of six local brands in Raise Landscaping. On September 29, 2026, Lawn & Landscape reported that Raise has become a platform company for those brands. The other five are Mystic Gardens Lawn Contractors, GRC Services, Living Colour Landscapes, Power Group Care, and Reef Landscaping. The coverage described all six as part of the group without saying how each joined or what changed hands. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The company

Everglades is a full-service commercial landscaping company with more than 30 years of experience serving commercial properties, universities, homeowners associations, and public agencies across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties. Its work is led by year-round grounds maintenance and enhancement projects, from entry-feature renovations to full installations, backed by in-house irrigation and tree and palm care. A degreed horticulturalist and a certified arborist manage its accounts, and its crews work in English and Spanish.

The company cares for more than 500 acres across corporate campuses, master-planned communities, resorts, and institutional properties, and keeps a deliberately focused portfolio of major properties so each one gets a dedicated team. It still operates from Hialeah under its own name, now as a division of Raise. Steve Mazzarella is president of Everglades and sits on Raise's leadership team.

The partner

Raise Landscaping is a commercial landscaping company serving Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties and the Florida Keys. It is a portfolio company of Liberty Partners, a New York City private equity firm, and Liberty principal Dan Bochner is a board observer at Raise. Martin Katz is Raise's founder and chief executive. Before Raise, he was vice president of business development at Crete Mechanical, an HVAC, electrical, and plumbing company, where he executed 35 acquisitions over three years. Across its divisions, Raise employs more than 400 people at four locations and serves more than 1,000 clients, among them communities and HOAs, hospitality and healthcare properties, golf and private clubs, retail centers, and municipalities.

"The properties that shape how people live, work, heal and gather deserve a higher standard of care," Katz said. "We built Raise by bringing together teams South Florida already trusts, and giving them the resources to deliver that standard on every property, every visit."

How Raise keeps six brands under one roof

Raise did not fold its brands into a single name. According to Lawn & Landscape, each division keeps its crews, leaders, and client relationships, and Raise adds the equipment, systems, and storm-season capacity of a larger company. The divisions line up by county: Everglades and Mystic Gardens in Miami-Dade, GRC Services in Broward, Living Colour Landscapes and Power Group Care in Palm Beach, and Reef Landscaping in the Florida Keys. Each has its own president or general manager, except Living Colour, where Raise's director of operations, Luis Castellanos, is interim general manager.

The shared layer shows up in two places. Clients get one dedicated account manager, backed by the division that covers their area, and Raise is hiring account managers across all six divisions. When a named storm comes through, crews and equipment from all six divisions can be sent to the properties that need them first. For owners weighing their own options, our guide covers selling a landscaping business to private equity.

What this means for landscaping owners

A private-equity-backed group kept two brands side by side in Miami-Dade, and two more in Palm Beach, rather than merging them. In this model the local name and the local leadership are the asset. What changes sits behind them: account management, equipment, and storm-season crews drawn from across the group. For a long-established commercial landscaper, that makes who stays, in what role, and for how long the term worth settling first.

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Source: Lawn & Landscape - https://www.lawnandlandscape.com/news/raise-landscaping-debuts-as-platform-company-for-florida-brands