Commercial Landscape Contracts: Pricing Recurring Maintenance

How do you price a commercial landscape maintenance contract?

You price it from the crew hour up, not from the acre down. Start with a fully burdened crew hour rate that covers labor, equipment, and overhead. Then measure the property in the units that actually drive labor: square footage of turf and beds, linear feet of edging, plant counts, and irrigation zones. Multiply the hours each task takes by your crew hour rate, add a seasonality factor for slow and peak months, and build in a margin. A per-acre rule of thumb is fine for a quick gut check on a drive-by. It is not something you should sign a twelve month contract against.

Build a crew hour rate you can defend

Every number in this article is built off one thing: what does an hour of your crew actually cost you. If that number is a guess, the whole bid is a guess.

Layer it in three pieces:

• Direct labor. Add up wages for your typical maintenance crew (often a foreman plus one or two techs), then apply your labor burden for payroll taxes, workers comp, PTO, and unemployment. Burden typically runs in a wide range depending on your state and comp mod, so use your own payroll numbers here, not a number from a blog post.
• Equipment and vehicle cost. Truck and trailer ownership, insurance, and repair reserve. Mowers, string trimmers, blowers, hedge equipment, and blade or line replacement. Fuel for both the truck and the small equipment. Roll all of it into a per-crew-hour figure based on your actual annual spend divided by billable hours.
• Overhead recovery. Office, admin, general liability, software, marketing, and your own non-billable time, divided by realistic billable crew hours across the season, not clock hours.

Add those three layers and you have your break-even crew hour cost. Add your target net margin on top of that to get your sell rate. Write that sell rate down and price every maintenance contract against it. If a property does not clear it after you account for drive time and seasonality, walk away or renegotiate scope.

Measure the site in the units that drive labor

Do not price off satellite imagery or a client's stated acreage. Walk the property with a wheel or a laser and build a site measure sheet in the units that actually cost you time:

• Turf, square footage. Split mowable turf from steep or obstructed areas that slow the mower down.
• Beds, square footage. This drives weeding time, mulch volume, and pruning frequency.
• Edging, linear feet. Concrete edges, curb lines, and bed borders all add trim time that a per-acre number never captures.
• Plant counts, by type. Shrubs, ornamental grasses, groundcover, and trees each get pruned or maintained on a different cycle. Count them, do not estimate them.
• Irrigation zones. Count zones and note controller type, valve condition, and head type so you know what a seasonal check actually involves.

From that site measure, build a plant schedule and a task list, then time your own production on similar properties to convert square footage and linear feet into crew hours per visit. A tool like Landwright can hold that site measure and plant schedule alongside your irrigation notes so the same data feeds every renewal instead of getting rebuilt from scratch each spring.

Crew day planning and seasonality

A commercial maintenance contract is not one number, it is a calendar of crew days that changes shape across the year. Mow frequency in peak growing season can run weekly, then drop to biweekly or monthly in slower months depending on your region and turf type. Bed detail, pruning rounds, mulch refresh, fertilization windows, and irrigation start-up and shutdown all land on different weeks. Build the contract as a season-long crew day plan, not a flat monthly fee pulled out of the air:

• List every visit type: mow and trim, bed detail, pruning rounds, mulch install, fertilization, irrigation checks, seasonal color if it is in scope.
• Estimate crew hours per visit type based on your site measure.
• Multiply by the number of visits across the contract term.
• Total the crew hours, apply your sell rate, then divide by twelve for a level monthly invoice if the client wants one.

This is also where seasonality protects your margin. If your contract assumes 28 mow visits and the growing season runs long, or short, in a given year, you need language that lets you adjust visit count rather than eating the extra labor or leaving money on the table.

Irrigation: notes, adders, and where contracts get thin

Irrigation is one of the most under-priced line items on commercial maintenance contracts because it is invisible until something breaks. Build it in as its own line, not a vague "system checks" bullet.

• Zone count and type. A 12-zone system with mixed spray and drip heads takes longer to check and adjust than a simple 4-zone turf-only system.
• Seasonal start-up and shutdown. Price these as separate visits with their own crew hours, since they involve controller programming and a full zone-by-zone check.
• Local watering restrictions. Many municipalities and utility districts set watering day and time restrictions, especially in drought years. Note the property's applicable restriction schedule in your irrigation notes and build controller adjustments into your scope, because compliance often falls on whoever is running the system.
• Repair adders. Decide up front whether head replacement, valve repair, and controller troubleshooting are inside the maintenance fee or billed as extras with a not-to-exceed clause. Vague language here is where most disputed invoices come from.

Maintenance vs install: keep the scopes separate

A recurring maintenance contract and an install or renovation job are priced with different math, and mixing them is where margin disappears. Maintenance pricing is built on repeat visits and steady-state crew hours. Install and renovation pricing carries its own cost drivers that need to be broken out as a separate proposal, even when it is the same property manager and the same crew doing the work:

• Demolition. Removing dead shrubs, old mulch beds, or failed turf areas takes crew hours that have nothing to do with the maintenance rate.
• Material haul. Debris haul-off and new material delivery both cost fuel, dump fees, and truck time.
• Plant size and grade. A 1-gallon shrub and a 15-gallon shrub are not the same line item. Price by container size and grade, and note substitutions in writing if a specified variety is not available at bid time.
• Mulch and soil by the cubic yard. Estimate coverage from your bed square footage and desired depth, then price the material by the yard plus the labor to spread it.

If a property manager asks you to fold a bed renovation into the monthly maintenance number, decline politely and quote it separately. Otherwise you are financing their capital project out of your operating margin.

Drought-tolerant redesign and hardscape allowances

More commercial properties are asking for drought-tolerant redesigns, either to cut water spend or to comply with local watering restrictions. This work has its own pricing logic:

• Removal of existing turf or overgrown beds is demolition, priced by square footage and disposal method.
• New plant material for drought-tolerant beds is often smaller in count but higher in grade cost per plant, since drought-tolerant species are frequently sold at larger container sizes for faster establishment.
• Decomposed granite, gravel, or mulch top-dress is priced by the cubic yard delivered and spread.
• If the redesign touches a paver walkway, seat wall, or drainage structure, carry a hardscape allowance as a placeholder in the proposal and finalize it once a hardscape specialist or your own crew has scoped the material and labor. Do not guess at hardscape pricing inside a planting proposal.

Check the property's HOA plant list or design guidelines before finalizing species selection. Many HOAs restrict plant palettes for uniformity, and a redesign that gets rejected at the approval stage costs you a re-bid and a frustrated client.

Writing the contract so scope creep does not eat your margin

Most margin loss on recurring contracts does not come from a bad rate. It comes from scope that grows quietly over twelve months. Protect the number you built by putting it in writing:

• List the exact square footage of turf and beds, linear feet of edging, and plant counts covered, with a note that additions require a written change order.
• State visit frequency by season, not a flat "weekly service" line that ignores growing season slowdowns and speedups.
• Spell out what is included in irrigation service versus billed as a repair.
• Include a clause for material cost adjustment if mulch, soil, or plant material pricing moves significantly during the contract term.
• Require a walk-through at renewal to re-measure the site, since beds expand, turf gets converted to parking, and plant counts change as things mature or die out.

Keeping this documentation organized across a season, and across every property on your route, is the difference between a renewal conversation backed by data and a renewal conversation that starts with "well, it feels like we're doing more work than last year." Software built for landscape crews, Landwright included, exists mainly to keep that site measure, plant schedule, and irrigation history in one place so the number holds up when a client pushes back.

Frequently asked questions

What is a typical margin target for commercial landscape maintenance contracts?

Margin targets vary by market and overhead structure, but most established maintenance operations aim for a net margin in the range of contractors would consider healthy for a service business, generally somewhere in the low double digits after full overhead recovery. The exact number should come from your own overhead and labor numbers, not an industry average, since your burden rate and equipment costs are specific to your shop.

Should I price commercial maintenance by the acre or by crew hours?

Use crew hours built from an actual site measure. Per-acre pricing ignores bed density, edging length, plant counts, and irrigation zone count, all of which drive real labor time. Two four-acre properties can have very different labor costs depending on how much of that acreage is turf versus dense bed area.

How do I handle mulch and soil pricing in a maintenance contract?

Estimate mulch and soil volume in cubic yards based on your bed square footage and target depth, then price material cost plus spread labor as a separate line, either as an annual allowance inside the contract or as a standalone proposal each season. Material costs move enough year to year that baking a fixed mulch price into a multi-year contract without an adjustment clause is risky.

Do I need to account for local watering restrictions in my pricing?

Yes. If the property is subject to watering day or time restrictions from the local water utility or municipality, your irrigation scheduling and any controller adjustments need to reflect that. Note the restriction in your irrigation notes for the property and build the compliance check into your seasonal start-up visit.

How should I price a drought-tolerant redesign versus regular maintenance?

Price it as a separate proposal from the ongoing maintenance contract. Break out demolition of existing plant material, new plant material by size and grade, mulch or decomposed granite by the cubic yard, and a hardscape allowance if the redesign touches any built structure. Once the redesign is installed, fold the new maintenance requirements into the recurring contract at renewal.

What is the biggest reason recurring landscape contracts lose money?

Scope creep from unpriced additions, usually extra bed area, added plant material, or irrigation repairs, that get absorbed into the flat monthly fee without a change order. The fix is documenting the exact scope at signing and requiring written approval for anything beyond it.