After growing to a team of two dozen in just several years, an over-the-mountain landscaping company is expanding to a new market in the state.
Millhouse Howell Landscape Co. began operating in the Lake Martin area on a full-time basis last year and plans to open a brick-and-mortar location and hire several full-time local employees in that area this year.
Two college roommates founded the company in its current form just several years ago.
“I think it was August or September of 2019 he and I decided to partner up and went off to the races from there,” Millhouse Howell Cofounder and Director of Construction Will Howell said of his cofounder, Adam Millhouse, who is now the company’s director of design and estimating.
The company was founded with a team of five when Howell decided to go into business with Millhouse, who had founded his own landscaping company after graduating college. Now it has 24 employees.
“It’s kind of been chaos in a good way the whole time we’ve been in business,” Howell said.
The company is a full-service landscape maintenance, construction and design company. That entails routine service, pruning chemicals, fertilizer, weekly maintenance, monitoring irrigation systems, making repairs, handling outdoor lighting systems, and on the construction side, building anything from walls to driveways to pools.
Howell said the company does some maintenance work for commercial clients but mainly works with residential clients. He said the company wants to continue taking on high-end commercial work, but Howell estimated 95% of its business is residential.
At one point, Howell said the company had to stop taking on new maintenance clients just to keep up with all of its construction projects but was able to start taking on new clients on that side of the business once again roughly two years ago when the company hired someone with 17 years of experience in landscaping maintenance.
Much like home renovations boomed during the pandemic, it was a busy time for landscaping as well.
“Even if they weren’t redoing or renovating their home, they were more focused on their home,” Howell said.
Serving as a base of operations in Birmingham, the company has a yard shop for trucks and equipment and a separate office building.
“We’re trying to find a piece of property in the next year or so or two years (where) we could have a shop and an office all together,” Howell said.
As for the expansion to Lake Martin, Howell said the move made sense for long-term growth of the business, considering many of their clients have homes in the area.
“When you’re seeing the caliber of these homes that are being built, that’s what we focus on here is high-end residential clients,” he said.
And Howell didn’t rule out more expansions further down the road.
“We don’t have a specific site or another location, but it’s a long-term goal to have a third market that we’re in,” he said.