Landscaping firm buys irrigation business in second deal in six months – Richmond BizSense

The owners of a Henrico-based landscaping company have closed their second acquisition in less than a year, this time branching out into the irrigation business.

Terra Forma Landscaping’s Rilee Harman, Ian Smith and Billy Stinson recently purchased Miller Irrigation & Landscape Lighting, a 24-year-old firm led by married couple Jim and Lisa Miller. Terms were not disclosed.

The purchase, which closed in late June, came six months after the three Terra Forma business partners and former Collegiate schoolmates acquired Robbins Landscaping, a 35-year-old firm that’s in the process of transitioning to the Terra Forma brand.

Miller Irrigation will continue under its name as a division of Terra Forma, said Smith, who noted that it adds a new service to Terra Forma’s wheelhouse. While Terra Forma had done some landscape lighting before, Smith said the deal enhances that service while adding irrigation to its capabilities.

“Irrigation is often one of the big issues that we run into maintenance-wise,” Smith said. “Our goal is to be able to manage all those services on a property together, whereas previously they’re often very disjointed between different contractors, and that disjointed nature creates quality issues on the property.

“It’s a really cool acquisition for us, because it’s helping build who we are as a company, as opposed to just growing as a landscaping business.”

Smith said they weren’t looking to make another acquisition but jumped at the opportunity when they learned that the Millers were looking to sell their company, which Terra Forma had worked with on properties around town.

“They came on the market, and it just was like, ‘Wait a minute, this solves the problem that we have,’” Smith said. “You don’t often get an opportunity to purchase and combine forces with a business of their quality, so even though we weren’t looking, we just felt it was the right move and so we scrambled to make it happen.”

Jim Miller, who founded the firm in 2000 after more than a decade in the industry, said he and Lisa were ready to move on from the business but wanted to make sure it would be in good hands.

Lisa and Jim Miller

“After 24 years, we were like, ‘Okay, we need to move on and start doing some traveling and start enjoying our fourth quarter of our lives.’ It was just the right time to do it,” he said.

“We were hesitant, because whenever you work so hard to get a company established, you want to make sure whoever takes the reins is going to treat it the same way you did to get it to that point. It seemed like the perfect match.”

The couple worked with business broker Casey Grimes, then with locally based Seamless Business and Practice Sales, and talks with the Terra Forma team started in February, Miller said.

Smith said all of Miller Irrigation’s 24 employees came over with the deal, including the Millers, who are staying on for a time in an advisory capacity.

The additions bring Terra Forma’s total staff count to 70. The company operates out of 3100 Aspen Ave., where Miller Irrigation had been based.

Smith said Miller Irrigation had been doing about $3 million in annual revenue prior to the deal. Miller said the figure would vary year to year but had kept between $2.5 million and $3 million in recent years. Terra Forma and Robbins brought in $6 million combined in revenue last year.

Miller said his company had opportunities to grow but stayed small to maintain a healthy work-life balance. He said he and Lisa plan to spend more time traveling with that balance now tipping away from work.

“When you grow, you have to sink more into it as far as resources, and we were just at that point that we decided to stay the way we were and still have a life outside of work,” he said. “We were very much in demand, but we can only take on what we can take on without stretching ourselves too thin.”

Of the new owners, Miller added: “I think they’re going to take it to the next level.”

Former classmates at Collegiate, Smith, Harman and Stinson partnered up to purchase Robbins after Harman and Stinson acquired Terra Forma, a 20-year-old firm, in 2021. That deal stemmed from Terra Forma being a client of Yard Works, the landscape supply company that Stinson co-owned with his father, Bill Stinson, before it was acquired two years ago by a national distributor.

Smith and Stinson attended Virginia Tech together, both studying building construction, while Harman, a William & Mary and VCU Brandcenter grad, has degrees in business administration and strategic communication. The three graduated from Collegiate in 2006.

While the Miller Irrigation deal has expanded their scope of services, Smith said they’re not looking to make more acquisitions for now.

“We weren’t necessarily at the time that Miller became available,” he said. “But ultimately, when they became available, sometimes you just have to make the move, because it’s the right move.”