Landscaping as an art dates back thousands of years. For as long as there have been homes and businesses, people have aspired to have beautiful outdoor spaces. It has, however, evolved over the years to become a billion-dollar industry, with more than 640,000 landscaping businesses across the U.S.
Malone’s Landscape Management, with two locations in Kent and Snohomish, Washington, has become a major player in that space, serving the greater Seattle area for over 33 years. Specializing in custom landscape design, installation and maintenance, Malone’s Landscape has grown from a small residential service provider to a well-rounded firm providing commercial and design-build maintenance.
This growth is thanks in part to the vision of Malone’s chief operating officer, Ryan Malone. The son of Malone Landscape’s founders, he started with the company as an operations manager after graduating from Central Washington University in 2017. He recently transitioned to the COO position in 2023.
Malone’s focus on company culture has paid off in dividends as the company has grown from a small operation to $10 million in commercial maintenance and nearly $8 million in design-build, surpassing residential work.
In this Q&A, Irrigation & Lighting shares how Malone, a 2025 Irrigation Association Industry Standout, got started on his journey in landscaping and how he is inspiring others to think outside of the box in an age-old industry.
Irrigation & Lighting: How did you get started in the landscaping business?
Ryan Malone: It’s a family, second-generation company. My brother and I both work in the company now. I started on the maintenance side. My entire life I’d always been around the company but mostly started on the construction side, working on construction crews and working in the nursery as a younger kid.
Then, I went to college, played college baseball and came back into the company on the commercial maintenance side of the business, and it was very small and kind of fluttering at the time. I came in, and here we are, seven years later, and we’ll be right around $10 million on that side, and then our design build side, which is the other side that I’m operating as well, is approaching $8 million.
We’ve always notoriously been heavier residential design build. The last two years, our commercial maintenance has now outpaced that and kind of taken over as the bigger side of the company.
Irrigation & Lighting: What initiatives have you implemented to grow the business?
Malone: The biggest thing I really narrowed in on was getting the culture right and getting the right people on the bus. From there, it’s just been growing from within. There’s been some key players who have come on that have been great hires and have really been great assets to the team, but also just a big approach of taking care of our people — and they’ll take care of our clients — and then promoting from within. We have eight people that have started all the way at the labor level, that have worked into management positions now and have helped fuel a lot of that growth internally.
Irrigation & Lighting: Why is company culture so important to your business?
Malone: We really had kind of a polarized approach where construction was construction and maintenance was maintenance. No one talked to each other. It was very split.
Initially, I just worked on the maintenance side of things, and then two years in, we implemented a culture committee that started creating monthly culture rallies. We brought in awards and started to really make sure we were recognizing the work that all the individuals on the team were putting in.
We also placed a big emphasis on development and growing the people from within to then create a career path and a career ladder, not always just bringing new people in from outside for bigger key positions. It set people up to actually want to improve and get better and move up the ladder.
Irrigation & Lighting: How else are you helping to move Malone’s Landscape into the future?
Malone: I’ve been a little bit riskier with some technology moves and things like that. We were pretty early in implementing the Weathermatic SmartLink smart irrigation controllers. Everyone’s doing it now, but that was a big bite off early on that we weren’t probably totally ready for but I committed to, and it worked out.
Irrigation & Lighting: What inspires you to take innovative or what some people may think are risky chances within the industry?
Malone: I bring a new perspective of not being totally in the industry for too long. I kind of came with a fresh look at things. I started going to conferences and things like that, which really sparked that interest in trying to stay ahead and seeing how we could reduce labor and efficiencies. We’re starting to really take a hold and trying to figure out how to run it better, so that kind of drove some of those more calculated risk assessments.
Irrigation & Lighting: What does the future hold for Malone’s Landscape and the industry overall?
Malone: A constant for any company right now in the green industry is getting the development side of your company going. You have to develop and train and lead your team in a way that’s putting the best foot forward. That’s another thing that I’ve done that is kind of out of the norm of the industry — hiring people that weren’t industry. I knew if I got a good personality and a good trait in a person, that I could train them on the landscape side. That was a little bit of a different approach, pulling people from other industries into the green industry. Showing them that it is a real career, and it’s a booming industry that’s growing like crazy right now. That’s certainly led to a lot of success here.
I definitely see super steady growth, targeting that destination company and being a company that attracts great talent. We’re certainly on a good path for that and starting to lead the charge in other areas. We are raising the standard in our current region, and so that’s where I see us going — being industry leaders in our area of raising the bar of standards and quality.
Congrats to our other recipients!
Although Irrigation & Lighting was able to connect with just Ryan Malone for this special article, the Irrigation Association applauds the work and growth of our other Industry Standouts:
- Stefan Bortak, owner, bortak.design, Stuart, Florida
- Joe Swett, CEO, Sunrise Irrigation & Sprinklers, Palm Harbor, Florida
Join us in congratulating Malone, Bortak and Swett as they lead the industry forward.
