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Lawn Master: 25 years of turning turf professionals into business owners
As 2027 approaches, Lawn Master is preparing to mark a landmark 25 years of franchising. A quarter of a century built on a simple but powerful idea: the skills you've spent your career mastering on the course, the pitch or the estate are exactly the skills customers are searching for when it comes to caring for their lawn.
Established in the 1990s by Bob Underhill and his wife, Lawn Master remains the only company in the UK that actively recruits turf professionals into franchise ownership. It's a distinction the business is proud of, and one that continues to define how it grows. Greenkeepers, groundsmen and turf professionals do not need to retrain or reinvent themselves to succeed with Lawn Master. They simply need the right business behind them to turn deep agronomic knowledge into a thriving, profitable business.
Your expertise, backed by a proven system Every Lawn Master franchisee joins with an exclusive local territory, comprehensive training, professional-grade equipment, national marketing support and ongoing operational backup. It is this infrastructure that lets turf professionals focus on what they do best, without carrying the burden of building a brand or a customer base from scratch. It's the reason so many franchisees hit the ground running, and why so many stay for the long haul.
The robotic mower opportunity The rise of robotic mowers is often talked about as a threat to lawn care businesses. At Lawn Master, it's viewed very differently. Robotic mowers cut grass, but they don't feed it, treat it, aerate it or diagnose what's happening beneath the surface. That distinction matters more than it might first appear, because it explains why the same technology is having almost opposite effects in different corners of the turf industry.
Golf courses and sports facilities have traditionally needed staff on the ground every single day just to keep fairways, greens and pitches cut. Automate that daily cutting task, and the immediate effect is a reduction in the number of hands needed to do it.
Lawn care for homeowners works on a completely different economic logic. The domestic lawn owner was never employing a team of staff to mow their lawn – they were either paying for a mowing service or doing it themselves. When a robotic mower takes over that task, it doesn't displace a job; it displaces a chore, and it frees up a slice of budget which can be used towards another service.
Crucially, that freed-up budget doesn't just disappear, it gets redirected. And it tends to flow straight into the services a robotic mower can't provide: scarification, feeding and treatment programmes, disease control, aeration and lawn renovations. These are precisely the specialist services Lawn Master franchisees deliver.
So, while the same underlying technology is shrinking labour demand on one side of the industry, it's expanding demand for professional expertise on the other. Robotic mowers aren't replacing the professional in lawn care; they're creating more demand for one.
Success in the first month Few case studies make the point better than Jon Eves, the ex-Chelsea FC and Tottenham Hotspur FC groundsman who covers Bromley & Sevenoaks. A turf professional before joining the network, Jon hit the ground running with a level of success that surprised even him, earning back over a third of his entire franchise fee within his first month of trading. Jon says “I’m now in my 15th year as a franchise owner, and we’re continuing to do really well. The business continues to grow, with two members of staff working alongside me and two vans on the road. We’ve built a strong customer base over the years, retaining customers who believe in us, both as a lawn care company and as lawn care professionals.”
His story isn't a one-off. Across the network, franchisees with turf backgrounds consistently convert their existing credibility and know-how into a fast, sustainable growth, supported every step of the way by a business that's spent 25 years refining the model.
A career change that isn't really a change at all For turf professionals considering the leap into business ownership, the question isn't whether their skills are transferable. It's who will back them while they make the transition. With 25 years of experience, a proven franchise system and a genuine focus on recruiting from within the industry, Lawn Master offers exactly that: the chance to keep doing the job you love, on your own terms, with the support of a company that understands exactly where you've come from.
To find out more about franchise opportunities with Lawn Master, visit www.lawnmaster.co.uk/franchise to apply for a prospectus and we will call you to book a 20-minute consultation to discuss the opportunities available to you.
