How to Start Lawn & Gardening Services Business?

The lawn care & gardening/landscaping market is a fast-growing market with booming opportunities to explore. A service business in this sector would be a very profitable business idea to explore. The scope of clients can range from domestic (small scale homes) to commercial (big industrial parks), where the profit potential is extremely high. From simple lawn maintenance to designing and landscaping the entire area, you can choose to provide a wide range of services to both domestic and commercial clients according to your business plan.

The demand in this industry continues to grow, it has longevity. In other terms, the lawn care and gardening business is here to stay. The demand in the market for “green spaces” is just in its nascent stage, but it will grow soon in leaps and bounds. In the next five years, we’ll only see the demand spiking up for these services both in the domestic market and in the commercial space.

If you have extensive knowledge in landscaping & gardening and are extremely passionate about it, starting a gardening services business would be wise.

8 Steps to Start a Successful Lawn Care Business

This compilation of eight fundamental steps will help you start and take the right steps forward when you plan to start a landscaping/gardening service business.

1. Understand the business

Before starting a lawn care business, let us first understand what are the daily requirements for this business to have a better perspective that may help you take an unbiased decision.

First, it demands you to understand various aspects of landscaping, lawn & gardening technicalities. Knowledge of landscaping design and gardening. Understanding of handling the required tools and machinery, equipment, etc. It involves many stakeholders’ management skills starting with negotiating with the suppliers, liaising with the customers, managing contractors and clients, managing the physical labour on a day-to-day basis etc. This business involves a lot of operational commitment and excellent management skills.

Having a specific qualification or experience is not necessary to start the business, but having them will add a brand image and value to your business. Another important thing to note is the seasonality of the business.

2. Do diligent market research

Before coming up with a gardening business plan do diligent market research in this segment. Understand the market size, scope, various players, and business models. Ensure that there’s enough demand in the market before starting up. Conduct a benchmarking study to understand various aspects offered by existing garden services businesses. At the end of this exercise, you should be able to craft out your target audience, pricing strategy, service offerings, and your differentiated value addition to customers.

3. Focus on strategy and business plan

Once you have done your research, you have all your inputs to chart out the strategy and a detailed business plan for the next five years. Make detailed financial plans and have budgets defined for each operation of the business. Steady cash flow is very important in an operative incentive business to ensure smooth operations.

A typical lawn care business plan or a gardening business plan offers majorly three types of services: Chemical Applications, Mowing, and Fertilising. You can start out by providing basic services and slowly increase your service offerings with growing demand.

4. Develop marketing and branding strategy

Establish a strong brand identity that can set your business apart. Have a catchy business name and a powerful mission statement that can reach directly to the customers. Define your USP and take it to the customers.

Effective marketing strategy can help make or break your business. Social media marketing, offline branding campaigns, advertisements in newspapers and magazines, FM ads, influencer marketing, branding on inventory, etc. are some effective brand building and marketing strategies. You can choose the relevant ones based on the locality, customer base, and service offerings. Use SEO to drive traffic to your website. Follow best practices.

5. Inventory and asset management

This business is a bit asset and inventory heavy. You will deal with machinery and tools of all shapes and sizes. Some of the very common equipment are lawnmower, trimmer, shovel, and sometimes you might also require heavy machinery like cement mixers. You might need to deploy a van/truck to move this equipment across customers. A warehouse to store the inventory.

Explore options for an asset-light model. Instead of purchasing everything, you can lease part of them and keep your business asset-light. You can invest in an inventory management tool that can help you manage the inflows and outflows in a better way. This can bring transparency into the system.

6. Prudent recruitment strategy

Like any other business, the gardening business also needs a recruitment strategy to hire the right talent to deliver the best to the customers. List down the specific requirements you’re looking for and advertise at the right places to recruit the workforce. The basic workforce you might need includes manual labour, a landscape designer, a stonework expert, and more.

7. Pricing strategy

Another essential aspect of this business is to have the correct pricing strategy. In this business, it is required to provide estimates to the customers, and so, it is essential to get your calculations right. You can include more variables in your pricing estimate and make it more detailed to know what he is paying for. In the estimate, you can include the price based on the lawn size, type of service, type of tools, etc. This is more transparent and creates confidence in your customers, and also makes your brand more valuable.

8. Create an attractive business portfolio

The lawn care and gardening business is usually aesthetic. There’s a high scope to showcase your beautiful work and attract more customers, which can help grow your business to the next level. The competition in this space is huge, and it’s more of a need to build and showcase your portfolio.

Visuals speak better than words. Facebook and Instagram changed the way people perceive brands and businesses. Create samples of your work -- gardening work videos, work in progress photos, finished work, and more to tap on the curiosity of the potential clients. Client testimonials and influencer marketing content work wonders. Make the best portfolio possible. Promote customer reviews and references.

Conclusion

To start and grow a lawn care and gardening business involves a lot of planning, commitment, operational effort, and patience. But, it will be a joy when trees blossom, and customers come back to you extremely satisfied and with happy feedback. Running a lawn care and garden service business requires thoughtful planning, constant innovation, a creative mindset, and excellent stakeholder management skills. If done right, it will flourish into a profitable entity and grow with time.

Also read:

1) How To Start A Stationery Business?
2) Does Commercial Solar Power Make Sense For Businesses?
3) Where Do the Best Business Ideas Come From?
4) How Small Businesses Afford Digital Marketing?
5) OkCredit: Simple, Paperless & Secure solution for businesses

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FAQs

Q. What are some challenges for “lawn care business” owners?

Ans. Some challenges you might face are the following: a) It might be challenging to find your niche and compete in the existing market. b) If you belong to a place with seasonal weather, it might hit your business. c) Competing with the established companies in business may be tricky; you require exceptional knowledge of the market and strategise your business plan accordingly.

Q. Is a “lawn care service business” a profitable one?

Ans. Gardening or landscaping can be profitable businesses in itself. Customers are becoming more environmentally conscious and focusing more on beautiful gardens/nurseries for their homes. Even indoor gardens and apartment green zones are becoming the basic interior decor norm these days. This is a market with ever-growing demand.

Q. What type of services are usually provided in the landscaping business?

Ans. There are a wide variety of services that different players provide in the market. Some choose their niche offerings, while some are more general where they cater to almost every service in this sector, starting from installation and maintenance of gardens, stonework, seasonal flowers, building nurseries, container gardens, and many more.

Q. What are the various service businesses in the green industry?

Ans. In the lawn and gardening business space, there are many business ideas that you can explore. Some of the very basic business ideas include pest control services, nursery services, landscape design, architecture, and maintenance services, lawn mowing and maintenance services, hydro-seeding services, and many more.