A Gardening and Landscaping
Business: For Those Who
Love Working Outside!

Landscaping Business Ideas

The number and variety of landscaping business ideas is almost endless and only limited by your imagination. You may already have your own idea. However, the following list of some of the more popular ideas for landscaping and gardening may help you get started:

• General gardening maintenance service; mowing and edging lawns, trimming trees and bushes, minor fixing of sprinklers, at residential homes and businesses.
• Installing and repair of manual and automatic sprinkler systems.
• Laying sod, reseeding new lawns.
• Installing fish ponds, including planting vegetation in and around the ponds.
• Building planters.

Knowledge and Skills Needed to Start a Garden Landscaping Business

You should have some artistic ability and be able to produce finished landscaping work that is visually appealing. If you find that you would like to start a landscaping business, but you lack any necessary skills, you can team up with at least one other person, who does have the abilities that you lack. And remember the old Chinese proverb, especially true in this profession: “many hands make light work.”

You need to be able to draw up accurate job estimates for your customers. It will save you a big headache and big money too! The best way to learn this is from discussing it with experienced professional landscapers. Find out how long a particular job should take and how much to charge. A good book on landscaping from the library might help you to figure this out also.

Be able to keep accurate records of all business transactions. So you will need to find a bookkeeping system that works for you. You will need organization skills. If your business working space is at home, you will need space or a room for your office and a place to keep garden landscaping supplies and tools, maybe your very large garage. If you get a large enough job, you have to be organized and ready.

You will have to have a knowledge of gardening and landscaping tools and equipment. But I'm not going to try to list all the very numerous assortment of tools available for a landscaping business.

And the assortment will depend on the particular task too! For example, a lawn maintenance business will have an entirely different set of tools from a small business installing sprinkler systems. But I'll just mention some key equipment

Tools You Will Need

You will definitely need a pickup truck or van, for bigger jobs a trailer.

For a general house and business maintenance service: mower, edger, weed-eater, blower, and various hand tools.

If you install sprinklers, you definitely need a power trencher (just rent one for the day), or you will die trying to dig the trenches solely with a hand shovel!

The same goes for laying sod or seeding for a lawn: you will need a fairly large power tiller to cultivate the soil before laying the sod.

That's enough trying to list equipment. If you don't know what you need, you can easily find out, or email me for help!

It's important to know that you need not worry about actually purchasing some of the larger equipment, for example, a tiller, because you can easily rent some equipment for the day and for not very much money, at such places as Home Depot, Lowe's, and rental yards.

Getting Started

Get a business license at your local city hall. While there, ask them what other permits you need to do business in their city.

The effectiveness of your advertising campaign will determine the success of your business. Place the following ad (an example, of course) on Craigslist or other local publication and you should soon have some jobs:

Another great source (maybe the best way) to find work is networking with friends, relatives, and acquaintances.

If you lack certain skills, for example, in sprinkler repair, there are many courses available at local colleges and even adult education centers throughout the country for many aspects of this very diverse occupation.

Go to any garden supplies store, for example, Home Depot or Lowe's, or your local library, and find books or magazines on garden landscaping of all sorts.

It's very important that you know how and where to purchase supplies, and not just anywhere, but where to find wholesale supplies, with a good supply house, with the best cost effective prices, at prices that will help you to maximize your profit. So you will have to look and shop around carefully.

A great place to purchase tools, equipment, and when available, supplies is at garage sales, estate sales, and swap meets (flea markets) during the summer months.

Potential Earnings and
Start-up Costs

A gardening or landscaping business can be very profitable! But it depends on how skilled you are at landscaping, how far you want to get into it, and your advertising campaign.

If your job search campaign is just reasonable, you could make $50,000 to $75,000 by the second or third year, but it will take some hard work on your part. Start-up costs vary greatly with the type of landscaping business but usually is pretty inexpensive. If you plan on renting larger equipment instead of trying to purchase them, for example, a power tiller or trench digger, the initial cost could be less, from $3,000 to about $10,000 at the most.

The work is still out there, despite the recession. Try to diversify as much as you can. Sprinkler installation is still very much in demand. You might start out with smaller jobs but don't be afraid to take on a bigger one. After you become more experienced, always go for the BIGGEST jobs, even if you have to hire others (friends and relatives are the best help).

When you do have a chance at bidding on a big job, make sure you don't under bid! Whatever you think the job is worth to you, bid more! It's better to over bid and lose the job than to under bid and get burned.