This page explains how the numbers on The Green Industry Report are produced. Each article also carries its own “How we built these numbers” note with the specific inputs it used.
Cost estimates
We don’t have our own job-invoice data, and we don’t survey contractors for prices. Every cost range on the site is an estimate built from inputs we can cite, and the arithmetic is shown on the page so you can rerun it with your own numbers.
| Input | Where it comes from | What it sets in the estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Material prices | Published price lists from manufacturers, growers and suppliers, with the date we checked them | Cost per unit of material (pallet, cubic yard, block, bag) |
| Coverage and quantity | Manufacturer spec sheets and coverage charts | How much material a given area needs, plus waste allowance where the spec states one |
| Labor | BLS OEWS wage estimates for the relevant occupation and area | Hourly labor cost before employer overhead and profit |
| Permits | State and municipal permit fee schedules | Fees where a permit applies, such as some retaining walls |
| Assumptions | Stated on the page | Crew hours, overhead and margin, site conditions |
Ranges reflect the spread in those inputs (material grade, delivery distance, wage differences between areas, site prep), not a sample of what contractors actually charged. A real quote will differ with the contractor’s overhead and margin, access to the site, soil and slope, season and local demand. Treat our ranges as a way to check whether a quote is in a sensible zone, not as a price.
Federal datasets
Industry, employment, wage and price figures come from these federal programs. We download the agency’s own files, parse them with scripts, and do only simple arithmetic on the published cells (shares, per-establishment averages, percent changes). We don’t impute or estimate cells an agency suppressed; they appear as “not published”.
| Dataset | Agency | Vintage used | What we use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) | BLS | May 2025 | Wages and employment for landscaping workers, supervisors, tree trimmers and landscape architects, by state and metro |
| Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) | BLS | Annual averages through 2025 | Covered jobs, establishments and pay in landscaping services (NAICS 561730), by state and over time |
| Current Employment Statistics (CES) | BLS | Monthly, latest release | Monthly employment, hours and earnings in landscaping services |
| Consumer Price Index (CPI) | BLS | Monthly, latest release | Consumer prices for gardening and lawn care services and outdoor equipment |
| Producer Price Index (PPI) | BLS | Monthly, latest release | Producer prices for turf equipment, fertilizer and lawn chemicals |
| County Business Patterns (CBP) | Census Bureau | 2023 | Employer establishments, employment and payroll by state, metro and size |
| Nonemployer Statistics | Census Bureau | 2024 | One-person landscaping businesses and their receipts |
| Economic Census | Census Bureau | 2022 | Industry revenue, product lines, firm size and concentration |
These programs count different things, so their totals don’t match. QCEW counts jobs covered by unemployment insurance. CBP counts employment in the pay period that includes March 12. CES is a monthly survey. OEWS estimates are pooled from six semiannual survey panels. Census applies noise to some CBP and nonemployer cells to protect confidentiality, and we carry its noise flags into our files.
Two gaps worth knowing: BLS publishes no producer price index for landscaping services, and its CPI series for gardening and lawn care services skips months when the sample is too small. Where we compare that series over time, we compare only months that exist in both periods. Annual pay converted from hourly wages assumes 2,080 hours, the BLS convention.
State licensing table
Each row of our state licensing table comes from reading that state’s statute, administrative rule or licensing agency page, which the row links. Each row shows the date we verified it.
“None found at state level” means we found no state licensing program for that kind of work. It does not mean the work is unregulated: cities and counties can require business licenses, contractor registration or permits, and pesticide application is licensed through a separate state program.
The licensing table is general information, not legal advice. Rules change; confirm with the agency linked for your state before you bid or hire.
License directory
- Listings in the licensed landscaper directory come only from license records published by state licensing agencies. We don’t accept self-submitted listings.
- Each listing names the agency, license number, license type and the date we retrieved the record.
- “License active” means the agency’s record showed an active status (the agency’s own term may be “Active”, “Clear” or similar) on the retrieval date shown. A license can lapse after that date.
- Where a record still read “Active” but its expiration date had already passed on the retrieval date, we left it out.
- We publish business name, license details, city and ZIP. We don’t publish street addresses.
- We don’t verify insurance, bonding, complaint history or quality of work. A license record shows that a license exists, nothing more.
Before hiring, check the license directly with the agency. Our guide on how to check a landscaper license shows how.
Software coverage
Our software coverage is built from each vendor’s published pricing and feature documentation, and every pricing claim shows the date we checked it. We don’t do hands-on testing, and we say so on each page. Vendors don’t pay for editorial coverage. We earn no affiliate commissions at launch; if affiliate links are ever added they will be disclosed on the page and labelled. Any sponsored slot in the software section is separate from the coverage and labelled “Sponsored”.
Charts and tables
Charts are drawn by code from the cited data, and the data behind each chart is also given as a text table. We don’t draw charts by hand or estimate values from someone else’s chart.
Updates
Pages show Published and Updated dates, and the Updated date changes only when the content changes. When an agency releases a new data vintage, we aim to update the pages that use it and change the data dates in the text. Fixes to errors are handled under our corrections policy and noted at the end of the page.