Environmental Leadership Awards 1999: Lawn Care Update

The lawn and landscape industry is growing – there is no doubt about that.

In a 1999 survey conducted by Research USA on be-half of Lawn & Landscape magazine, 69.3 percent of respondents said their 1999 sales will exceed their 1998 sales with an average increase pushing 20 percent next year.

Chemical lawn care and tree and shrub care should account for about 18.2 percent of the industry’s revenues as well. While this industry still remains an industry dominated by landscape construction and mowing services, more contractors are recognizing the benefits of offering weed, disease and insect control to their customers in order to capitalize on the high profit margins associated with this work.

To illustrate this point, a 1995 survey conducted by Research USA on behalf of Lawn & Landscape magazine found that just 11.4 percent of the industry’s revenues came from chemical lawn care or tree and shrub care that year, compared to this year’s 18.2.

While contractors offering these services are fairly evenly distributed across the country, the western region of the United States (41.3 percent of respondents in these states offer lawn care) tended to have slightly fewer lawn care providers than the northeastern (50.6 percent) or midwestern (49.6 percent) parts of the country, while the southern states appear to have the most competition (55.4 percent). The survey also seemed to indicate, however, that the dedicated lawn care and tree and shrub care companies are most often located in the Northeast or Midwest, as southern and western companies rely on other services to generate the bulk of their revenues but must offer lawn care as well due to more severe and year-round weed, disease and insect problems experienced there.

Lawn care companies also continue to focus primarily on the single-family, residential customer, as lawn care respondents to the survey said 72.6 percent of their revenues come from these customers, compared to 16.7 percent from commercial accounts and 7.9 percent from multi-family, residential accounts.

The average lawn care company is responsible for treating 534 acres each year, broken out as follows:

• 409 acres of single-family property
• 81 acres of commercial property
• 29 acres of multi-family property
• 15 acres of other property