Hiring
How to choose a landscaping company
Ten checks before you hire, which license applies to which part of the job, and what to rely on where there is none.
Find a Landscaping Company What it costs
Written by HyreYard Research Desk Primary-source research and fact checking
The short answer
Find out which license your state requires for this work, then confirm it with the issuing board, not the company. Get insurance certificates sent by the insurer, a written scope that states base depth, drainage and plant sizes, a plant warranty with its conditions, and references from work done two or three seasons ago.
What protects you when you hire?
The license with the board, the insurance with the carrier. A copy handed over by the company proves little.
A license is a fact about the company. A scope is a fact about your yard, and it is the one you can enforce.
A thin base, an undrained wall or a plant outside its zone can all look perfect on day one.
Find a landscaping company, then run these checks
Free, with no obligation: a person at HyreYard replies by email. Matching is not live yet, so this is not a quote. If a tree or limb is on a power line, stay away and call the utility.
Which credential covers which part of the job?
“Licensed” can mean a different credential for each part of one project. Ask which one, from which state.
| Credential | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Landscape contractor license | Named in 10 of 50 states by our count. Search the board for the business name and the classification. |
| Home improvement registration | 5 states fold landscaping into a general home improvement registration instead. |
| Irrigation license | 7 states have a dedicated irrigator credential and 7 include irrigation in another license. It can apply when the landscaper needs nothing. |
| Pesticide applicator certification | Every state certifies applicators under EPA’s 40 CFR Part 171. It covers who may apply products for hire. |
| Insurance certificate | Not a license. It proves a policy exists on the dates shown, and only the insurer can confirm it. |
Counts are from our licensing study, boards and statutes read September 5, 2026. Rules change: confirm with the board where you live.
What are the ten things to check?
Landscaping fails slowly, so each check is about what is written down before work starts.
A contractor license, an irrigation license and a pesticide license can each be separate. Our 50-state licensing table shows which applies where you live.
If weed or pest control is part of the job, ask for the certification number and category, and check it with your state agency before anything is sprayed.
General liability, and workers’ compensation where there are employees. Ask for certificates before tree work or machinery comes near the house.
Pruning and removal near buildings is its own discipline. Ask who will climb, and whether they work to ANSI A300 and Z133.
Species and sizes, quantities, base depth and compaction for any paving or wall, and what is removed as well as installed.
Either scoped and priced, or stated as adequate with a reason. Silence on a wet yard is a warning.
Who pulls any permit the work needs, and who calls 811 to mark buried utilities before anyone digs.
What is guaranteed, for how long, and what watering it depends on.
What the design needs each year, and who will do it. A design that needs more care than it gets fails slowly.
In your area, and ones you call. A job from last month shows only that the crew cleaned up.
What belongs in the written scope?
On anything paved or built, these lines separate two bids that look identical. The full list is on the base specification.
ICPI publishes 4 inches as the patio minimum on well-drained soil and 6 for a driveway, with 2 to 4 more on cold or wet ground.
A method and a target: 98% of standard Proctor density, ASTM D698 for pedestrian work.
ASTM C33 or CSA A23.1 FA1 concrete sand, not screenings or stone dust.
As a percentage and a direction. ICPI’s minimum is 1.5%.
The type, and how it is fixed.
Species and sizes, not quantities alone.
Where there is no license, the paperwork does its job.
In the 33 states where our study found no landscape license, nobody has checked the company for you. Insurance confirmed with the carrier, a written scope with the buried work specified, and references you actually call carry the whole weight.
What to ask on the site visit
Which parts do you do in-house, and which are subcontracted? Who insures the subcontractors?
Will you put base depth, compaction and edge restraint in writing?
Where does rain go once this is built, and is drainage work included?
What species and sizes, and will you ask before substituting?
Who waters new plants, and what does that do to the warranty?
What is the payment schedule, and what does the deposit buy?
When would you start, and how many days will the crew be on site?
Can I see two jobs you did three seasons ago in this area?
Which hiring mistakes are hard to undo?
Only the issuing board knows whether a license is current and in the right classification. Search it yourself.
New work looks its best the day it goes in. Ask for jobs old enough to have been through winters and wet springs.
A price that ends with the conversation is a sales tactic. A fair price will still be there tomorrow.
Tie payments to stages of work, and keep any deposit tied to materials.
Base depth, drainage and plant sizes that were only said out loud cannot be held to anything later.
Your inquiry
Tell us about the work
Nothing goes to a landscaping company unless you agree.
Free, with no obligation: a person at HyreYard reads your request and replies by email. Matching is not live yet, so this is not a quote, and nothing goes to a landscaping company unless you agree. If a tree or limb is on a power line, stay away and call the utility.
Find a Landscaping Company
One short form: your address and how to reach you. A person at HyreYard reads it and replies.
Questions
How do I check whether a landscaping company is licensed?
What insurance should a landscaping company carry?
Do I need an arborist for tree work?
Should I pay a deposit to a landscaper?
Why ask for references from two or three seasons ago?
Does HyreYard check landscaping companies for me?
Written and audited by
HyreYard Research Desk
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a landscaping company. We read the statute, the municipal code, the water-district rule or the federal soil file ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify. This desk is new.
The counts below are what we can already stand behind, and every one of them is counted from the studies on this site.
- 255
- source documents cited, each linked
- 112
- government (.gov) domains among them
- 258
- citations carrying a retrieval date
- 10
- research studies published
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. A rule comes from the statute, ordinance, board or agency that issued it, cited by section, with the URL and the retrieval date. We do not cite a blog that cites a code.
- Coverage is a number. A table titled to fifty states has fifty sourced rows. A table of cities is titled to the cities we actually read. Gaps are published as gaps.
- Company counts stay inside seven states. Texas, Arizona, Washington, California, Oregon, Florida and North Carolina. Texas is the largest roster on the weakest evidence, a self-reported NAICS sales-tax permit, because Texas licenses no landscaper. National claims rest on federal or state agency data, never on our counts.
- Fact, calculation, analysis and recommendation stay labeled. "According to…" is a source. "HyreYard analyzed… and calculated…" is ours. "This suggests…" is interpretation. We do not present our reading as something the source stated.
- We do not landscape, irrigate, plant, cut trees or pull permits, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favorable mention. Nobody buys a position on this site.
Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
Information on this page is general and may vary by location, local code, soil, climate and your own circumstances. It is not legal or engineering advice.
HyreYard is not a landscaping company: we plant nothing, grade nothing, build no wall, cut no tree and pull no permit, and we do not supervise or warrant landscaping work.
This page explains the work so you can read a proposal and judge the company that wrote it.