Lawn Care

Lawn care involves maintaining a client’s soft scaping so it stays healthy. Not every landscaping company provides maintenance, but it can be a great way to bring in recurring revenue.

Here are some common lawn care services to help get you started:

• Lawn mowing: Cut grass to an even height using a push or riding mower. This service is often paired with edging and blowing to clear paths. When pricing your lawn care services, you can give clients the option of one-off or weekly visits.
• Edging: This service creates clean lines between lawns and nearby pathways, garden beds, or other areas. You can offer edging alongside your lawn mowing services for a sharp, detailed look your clients will love.
• Dethatching: Leaves and stems collect at the base of actively growing grass, just above the soil’s surface, forming a layer called thatch. You can dethatch the lawn to help water and nutrients reach the grass’s roots more easily.
• Mulching: Mulch is made up of organic materials like grass clippings, leaves, straw, sawdust, and wood chips. You can apply it to the soil’s surface to lock in moisture, reduce weed growth, and promote overall soil health.
• Fertilizing: Fertilizer is a natural or chemical material that’s added to soil as part of regular maintenance. It provides the right nutrients to keep plants healthy and green. Timing will depend on the season and the type of lawn, but your lawn care schedule should account for spring fertilizing.
• Weed control: Regular weeding will keep weeds from growing out of control and taking over the entire space. Weeds grow fast, so you can offer hand-weeding or chemical weed control as part of your regular lawn care service.
• Leaf removal: Leaves fall to the ground throughout the year, but especially in the spring and fall. You can offer a recurring seasonal leaf removal service, whether it’s raking or blowing, to keep the lawn clean and green.

• Trimming: When trees and hedges get overgrown, the outdoor space looks messy and can be hard to use. You can cut back the overgrown areas to make the space more appealing and help the client enjoy it more.
• Pruning: This service involves removing dead or infected branches, twigs, or stems from trees and plants to encourage healthy growth.
• Yard cleanup: Some lawn care professionals offer yard waste removal, like fallen branches or other plant waste. This is a simple add-on service that keeps lawns looking great.
• Lawn aeration: During aeration, you’re poking small holes in the soil to keep it from compacting. This allows air, water, and other nutrients to seep in and help the roots grow. You’ll want an aerator to help you save time and do the job right.
• Over-seeding: Spread new grass seed over an existing lawn without turning the soil to improve overall lawn health. This process adds color, thickens grass, and prevents weed growth. It also helps with insect damage, drought stress, and other signs of deterioration. You can offer this service alongside aeration when a lawn is looking run down.
• Sod maintenance: If a client has a new lawn, they’ll need ongoing maintenance to ensure the sod stays put and stays healthy. You can provide regular watering to keep the new sod healthy.
• Artificial turf maintenance:Even though it doesn’t grow, artificial turf still needs to be sprayed and maintained regularly to keep it in top condition.
• Lawn pest control: Pests can affect a lawn’s health and make it hard to enjoy an outdoor space. Think about offering pest control services to keep insects at bay, like grubs, fire ants, and armyworms.
• Hourly labor: Your time is the most important part of any quote. It’s usually bundled into your other services. But if you know a task will take extra time or you need another employee, add more hours for extra labor.

Soft scaping services

Next up on your gardening services list is soft scaping, which covers all of a space’s horticultural elements. These services typically include:

• Planting: You can plant a wide range of shrubs, trees, and flowers according to specific landscape designs. You’ll need to remember the watering and sunlight requirements of different plants when creating your softscape design.
• Sod/turf installation: Sodding is a fast way to create an instant lawn where there wasn’t one before. It involves picking up, unrolling, and laying down strips of healthy turf (or sod), then watering heavily to help the grass take root in the soil beneath.
• Lawn returfing: You can remove old grass that’s too damaged to save, then install new turf. Some clients might need only small areas returfed, while others need their lawn completely redone.

• Artificial turf installation: Artificial turf is for homeowners who want an always-green lawn that never needs to be cut. Installing this turf is just as big a job as the natural kind. You’ll need to remove existing turf, if there is any, and lay down the new turf on top of the soil.
• Grading: If a surface isn’t flat and the client wants to plant new grass, you’ll need to level the surface to prepare for planting. This can be a good add-on service if you also offer sodding or seeding.
• Tree removal: Some clients may want to remove trees as part of their softscape design. You can cut a tree down yourself if you’re trained to do it safely.
• Your time is the most important part of any quote. It’s usually bundled into your other services. But if you know a task will take extra time or you need another employee, add more hours for extra labor.

Hardscaping Services

With hardscaping, landscapers add features to a garden that are designed to last, like fountains, concrete benches, and even firepits. These are bigger installation jobs that take longer to complete.

Common hardscaping services include:

• Patio installation: Constructing a patio on ground level involves building a base, adding a setting bed, and laying the paving. You may also want to add services like grading, planning, and detailing for a start-to-finish experience.
• Deck installation: Above-ground deck construction starts with an on-site consultation where you take measurements. From there, you design and plan the deck, then build the foundation and structure. Homeowners are usually responsible for getting the right permits, but you can offer this as an added service.
• Fence installation: Fences are posts connected by boards, wire, rails, or netting. To build a fence, you’ll meet with the client, create technical drawings, dig holes for the fence posts, set the posts in concrete, and secure the framework to the posts. You might also offer finishing work like painting or staining.
• You can remove old grass that’s too damaged to save, then install new turf. Some clients might need only small areas returfed, while others need their lawn completely redone.

• Retaining wall installation: Retaining walls support soil at an angle that it normally couldn’t maintain on its own. This type of installation needs planning and design to make sure the wall (and the soil) stay put.
• Water/fire feature installation: Some clients want water or fire features like fountains, waterfalls, ponds, or fire pits. This type of service takes some specialized knowledge, but it can also provide more opportunities for your business.
• Irrigation installation: Adding irrigation involves visiting the site, deciding on the best placement, and installing the system. To offer this service, you’ll need to understand how water systems work and how technology can control water flow.
• Path or driveway installation: You can work with clients to plan, design, and build custom paths and driveways. This often involves paving the area with brick, concrete, bluestone, flagstone, or another hard material.

Landscape Design

Landscape design involves planning and designing outdoor living spaces before doing any digging or planting. You can offer design as a standalone service or as the first step of a larger landscaping project.

A few common landscape design services include:

• Design consultation: You visit the site to assess the space and ask questions, then create a few rough ideas and finalize the design with the client. Standalone design consultations can be a good fit for DIY clients on a budget.
• Hardscape design: This type of design incorporates the “hard” elements of an outdoor space, like brick and rock. For example, a hardscape design could include a plan for a brick patio, stone wall, or fountain.

• Softscape design: Softscape covers any plants that will be included in an outdoor space, like trees, shrubs, and flowers. A client might want hedges lining their property, trees planted in specific spots, or flowerbeds laid out in a certain way.
• Xeriscape design: This type of design concentrates on building outdoor spaces that need low or no irrigation. It tends to use either hardy, low-water plants like cacti or is designed to collect and distribute rainfall among plants.
• You can work with clients to plan, design, and build custom paths and driveways. This often involves paving the area with brick, concrete, bluestone, flagstone, or another hard material.