"How much should landscaping cost?" is one of the hardest questions to answer honestly, because the real answer is "it depends on your property" — and boards hate that answer. What you can do is learn exactly which differences move a bid, and how to put every bid on the same footing so the comparison means something. That second part is where most communities go wrong.
A note up front: what the work costs is set by the companies bidding it, in your market, in the season you are buying. Get those numbers from local companies looking at your property. What follows is how to read them.
What actually drives the price
Two communities of the same size can get wildly different landscaping bids for legitimate reasons. The main cost drivers are:
- Size and type of maintained area. Turf, beds, and natural areas cost very different amounts per acre to maintain. Mowed turf is labor-heavy; a mulched bed is not.
- Visit frequency. Weekly mowing in a long growing season costs far more than biweekly in a short one.
- Terrain and access. Slopes, tight medians, street islands, and areas the crew has to work around take more time than open lawn.
- Scope of services. A bare mow-and-blow contract is one number. Add fertilization, irrigation service, seasonal color, mulch, and tree care and the number climbs.
- Local labor and fuel costs. Landscaping is a labor business. Wage and fuel markets move the price more than almost anything else, which is why the same scope costs more in some metros than others.
- Regional growing season. A community in the Gulf South mows nearly year-round; one in the Upper Midwest has a compressed season and a winter of near-zero mowing but real snow costs.
How landscaping is usually priced
Vendors typically structure pricing one of a few ways, and knowing which you are looking at helps you compare:
- Flat monthly/annual fee for a defined routine scope. Easiest to budget. The risk is a vague scope hiding what is and is not included.
- Per-visit pricing for mowing and routine care. Transparent, but seasonal swings make the annual total harder to predict.
- Per-service line items for extras — mulch, seasonal color, fertilization rounds, irrigation repairs, tree work — billed as performed or on a schedule.
The healthiest contracts combine a stable routine base with clearly itemized extras, so you know exactly what the fixed cost covers and what triggers additional charges.
The number is not the number: what a "cheap" bid hides
The lowest bid is frequently the most expensive contract, because low bids are usually low on scope, not efficiency. A price that undercuts everyone else typically means one or more of these:
- Fewer visits than the competing bids
- Less trimming and detail work, so the property slowly looks rougher
- Extras excluded that the other bids included, which come back as add-on charges
- No documentation, so you cannot tell whether the crew actually showed up
- Thin or no insurance, which becomes the association's problem the moment someone gets hurt
When one bid is dramatically lower than the others, the useful question is not "why are they so cheap?" It is "what did they leave out?" Put the low bid next to the others task by task and the gap usually names itself.
How to compare bids fairly
The only way to compare landscaping bids honestly is to make every vendor bid the same scope. If each vendor is pricing a different set of services, the numbers are not comparable and the lowest one wins for the wrong reason. To fix that:
- Write one detailed scope of work and send it to every vendor. Specify mowing frequency, trimming standards, what "cleanup" includes, fertilization rounds, mulch, irrigation service, and anything else you expect.
- Require line-item pricing so you can see how each vendor prices each component, not just a lump sum.
- Compare insurance and licensing, not just price. A bid without proper general liability and workers' comp is not actually cheaper — it is a transferred risk.
- Check references from similar communities and ask the boring questions: do they show up, do they communicate, what happened when something went wrong.
- Read the escalation and cancellation terms. How much can they raise the price at renewal, and how hard is it to leave if service slips?
Budget for the whole picture, not just the mow
Routine maintenance is the visible cost. The full landscaping budget also has to carry the seasonal and unpredictable work: spring and fall cleanups, mulch, seasonal color, fertilization programs, irrigation repairs, storm cleanup, and tree removal. A budget built only around the monthly maintenance bid is underfunded before the year begins. Set a contingency for irrigation, storms, and plant replacement as a deliberate board decision — pick the percentage, write it into the budget, and record why. Last year's actual spend on those three lines is the best starting point you have.
Where HOAcrew fits
Comparing bids fairly, verifying insurance, and then checking that you actually got what you paid for is a lot of ongoing work, and it is where most communities stop looking after they sign.
HOAcrew is where a board runs this. Vetted independent local landscaping companies submit proposals against the scope you publish; your board compares them side by side, selects one, and the contract is between your community and the company it chose. HOAcrew verifies the three documents that decide a bid — general liability, workers' compensation and the credential that company's trade requires, and an admin reads each certificate of insurance and files what the document says, with every expiry date held against the limits your community sets. Every company's own invoice arrives in one view, with the visit records and photos beside it, so the gap between what was quoted and what was delivered has nowhere to hide inside a monthly total.
Each service is billed at the price the company proposed, with sales tax and payment processing as their own line items, plus $25 a month per community — your first community is free.
The discipline is what carries the year: bid one clear scope, compare line items and insurance rather than totals, treat the outlier low bid as a question, and fund the whole picture. Do that and next year's board inherits a landscaping budget it can defend line by line.