The paperwork
How to read a landscaping estimate
Eleven lines every comparable bid states, what a blank line means, and how to turn three quotes into one comparison.
Find a Landscaping Company What it costs
Written by HyreYard Research Desk Primary-source research and fact checking
The short answer
A landscaping estimate is comparable only when it states the buried work: site preparation, base depth and compaction, drainage, edge restraint, plant sizes, soil amendment, disposal, access, permits, establishment watering and maintenance as its own price.
A lower bid that leaves those lines blank has priced a smaller job. Send every company one written scope and compare line by line.
What should you know before comparing bids?
Excavation, compaction, base, drainage and disposal are buried or hauled away by the time you see the yard.
It is work left out, or a price you will see later as a change order.
Three bids against three different scopes tell you nothing about price.
Find a landscaping company, then read the estimate
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.
Why can two honest bids be far apart?
Assume neither company is padding its margin. Four things can still separate the totals.
| Reason | What to check |
|---|---|
| Different scopes | One bid includes removing and hauling the old surface. The other assumes you will deal with it. |
| Different ground | One company checked the subgrade and priced a base for it. The other priced the easy case. |
| Different access | A skid-steer driving to the work and a crew wheelbarrowing through a side gate are different jobs. |
| Same word, different material | “Shrubs” covers a 1-gallon pot and a 15-gallon one. “Base” covers 4 inches of compacted aggregate and a thin bed of screenings. |
None of these shows in a total. All four show once the bids sit side by side against one list of lines.
Which eleven lines make a bid comparable?
Each line says what a complete bid states, and what it means when the line is blank.
What is removed, how deep, and how. If it is missing, the new surface may go on top of what is there, or the digging arrives later as a change order.
ICPI publishes 4 inches of compacted base as the patio minimum on well-drained soil, and 6 for a driveway, placed in 4- to 6-inch lifts. If it is missing, the bid has priced the pavers, not the patio. See the base specification.
Scoped and priced, or stated as adequate with a reason. If it is missing on a yard where water stands after rain, nobody has taken responsibility for where the water goes.
Botanical name, container or caliper size, quantity, and what happens if a plant is unavailable. If sizes are missing, whoever does the buying decides them.
What goes into the planting soil, how much, and whether a soil test informed it. If it is missing, the plants go into whatever is already there.
For any paver job: the type and how it is fixed. ICPI asks for “A minimum of 1 in. (25 mm) vertical restraining surface should be in contact with the side of the paver to adequately restrain it.” If it is missing, assume it is not in the price.
Spoil, old paving and green waste, hauled and tipped. A 200-square-foot patio dug 7 inches deep removes about 4.3 cubic yards of soil (our arithmetic). If it is missing, it is a change order later or a pile in your yard now.
Gate width, slope, overhead wires, soft ground, where a truck parks and what gets protected. If it is missing, nobody has visited, and the price is provisional.
Whether one is needed, who applies and who pays. Wall and grading thresholds are local: see our retaining wall permit study. If it is missing, the question has not been asked.
How much, how often, for how long, and who does it. Plant warranties can depend on it. If it is missing, it falls to you.
Installation total and yearly upkeep as two lines, each read on its own terms. If they are blended, the total cannot be compared with anyone else’s.
How do you turn three bids into one comparison?
Dimensions, base depth, drainage, plant sizes, disposal, and maintenance as a separate item.
Ask for each of the eleven lines as its own figure.
One row per line, one column per company. Copy each bid’s entry into its cell, word for word.
A column with every cell filled has quoted a job. A column with blanks has quoted a result.
Send the same question to every company, so the answers stay comparable.
Volumes are the part you can verify. Our gravel calculator works from your dimensions; loose stone compacts, so it takes your supplier’s compaction figure rather than guessing one.
The warranty governs the other ten lines.
Ask what is guaranteed, for how long, what triggers a claim, what it pays for and what voids it. Plants, workmanship and settlement can be three separate promises with three terms. A warranty with no stated conditions leaves the terms to whoever wrote it.
What to ask every company before you sign
Did you measure on site, and what did you assume about the ground?
What depth of compacted base, in what lifts, compacted with what?
Where does rain go after the grade changes, and is drainage in this price?
What sizes, and will you ask me before substituting anything?
What leaves the site, and is hauling included?
Does this work need a permit here, and who pulls it?
Who waters new plants, how often and for how long?
If the budget were fixed, what would you change first? The answer shows what they think matters.
Which reading mistakes cost the most?
A company with its own machine, a nearby yard or slack in its schedule can be cheaper on the same specification. Compare the lines first.
Ask what measure, where, and for what price. A phrase is not a line item.
It continues for months after the crew leaves. Put who, how much and how long on paper.
One number for installation and maintenance hides the recurring commitment and its renewal terms.
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
Why do two landscaping bids for the same yard differ so much?
Is the lowest landscaping bid always cutting corners?
What does “drainage addressed” mean on an estimate?
What should a plant schedule contain?
Does the estimate need to say who pulls the permit?
Can I ask a company to re-quote against my written scope?
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.