What belongs in a commercial landscaping contract

Two contractors quoting the same property will often land within a few percent of each other. What separates a good year from a bad one is what the document says about scope, schedule and change, and most of that is written badly or not at all.

Scope by season, not by service list

A list of services is easy to write and hard to enforce. A seasonal scope is better: what happens in the opening visit, what the weekly rotation covers between May and October, what the closing visit includes, and what is explicitly excluded.

The exclusions matter most. Irrigation, tree work above a certain height, hardscape repair and storm response are the four that most often turn out to belong to nobody.

Every dispute we have seen on a commercial property came from a scope that was silent, not a scope that was wrong.

Frequency in writing

• How often turf is cut, and what happens in weeks of low growth
• How often beds are weeded and edged
• How many mulch applications are included per season
• How many seasonal colour rotations are included
• Whether cleanups are single-pass or two-pass

A defined response window

Not a promise of same-day everything, which nobody keeps. A realistic window for non-urgent issues and a separate one for anything affecting safety or access. Written down, it becomes something both sides can hold to.

Reporting

A short record of what was done on each visit costs the contractor almost nothing and gives the manager something to show a board. Ask for it. Most contractors will agree and few will offer.

Term and exit

Multi-year terms are reasonable and usually get you better pricing. But there should be a clear, non-punitive exit for non-performance, tied to a documented process rather than to a subjective judgement.

Where we sit on all this

We would rather write the exclusions clearly at the start than discover them in July. A contract that is precise about what is not included is a contract that survives its first difficult month.