Landscaping estimate template and lawn care quote template: free Excel, Word and PDF, with two filled-in examples

Published November 10, 2026 · Template and sources checked November 10, 2026

• Free. The files come by email.
• Deepsel is our product: free estimate, invoice and scheduling software for contractors (scheduling, quotes, invoicing, card payments). The section before the FAQ says what it does with a landscaping estimate and what it doesn't.
• Not legal or tax advice. The deposit and sales tax rules below were read on November 10, 2026; your state has the last word.

A landscaping estimate template turns what you measure into a price the customer can sign. Two kinds of work need two kinds of sheet. A lawn care quote is a price per visit times a season of visits, so it starts from the turf area and the minutes a visit takes. An install estimate is priced once, from quantities: cubic yards of mulch at a depth, square feet and pallets of sod, plants by container size, labor hours from production rates, then delivery, rentals, dump fees and your markup. Both go out with what's included, what isn't, a valid-until date and the deposit.

This template does both. Get it five ways: make your own copy in Google Sheets or download the Excel version (.xlsx), where the quantities, minutes, prices, options, deposit and monthly price calculate as you type; or copy the Google Doc, download the Word version (.docx) or print the PDF, a three-page form for the site visit. Pick a format, enter your email and I'll send the links.

I read what ranks for "landscaping estimate template" and "lawn care quote template" on November 10 before building it. The Smartsheet file at the top for the first search is a form: client fields, a box for seasonal, repeat or one-time, a labor table of hours times a rate, a materials table, a tax rate and one "other" cost, with nothing for markup, a deposit or a valid-until date.¹ Estimation Builder's guide has the mulch formula and a worked bed refresh, and its template is a sample PDF.² Staxen's Excel file totals every line, and its lines are all install work.³ EstimationPro's lawn care page prices each visit from crew-minutes, as a form you print or save as a PDF.⁴ None of them works out a visit's minutes or an install's labor hours from the measurements with published production rates. That's what this one adds, with a mowing season and an install in one file and a filled-in example of each.

What should a landscaping estimate include?

A landscaping estimate should include your company and license number if your state requires one, the customer and property, an estimate number, date and valid-until date, the measurements, every priced line, sales tax, the total, the options, what's not included, the warranty and payment terms, the deposit and signature lines. Here's what goes on each kind, and what new owners leave off.

Lawn care quote template: from square feet to a price per visit

Mowing is sold by the visit and priced by the minute. Size sets the starting point, and the yard decides the rest: an owner quoted on the lawn care pricing page has 5,000 square foot yards that take longer than 15,000 square foot ones. So the quote tab works out minutes from the lawn's measurements, at rates you can check and change, then turns the minutes into money.

1. Measure the lawn

Start with the lot. The county parcel record gives it, or a map tool's measure function does (the free lawn care software page covers the free ways to measure). Take off the house and garage, the driveway, walks and patio, the beds and anything else you won't mow. What's left is the turf. Then walk it and write down three more numbers: the hard edges you'll edge (walks, driveway, curb), the lines you'll string-trim (bed edges, fences, the foundation) and the obstacles you'll trim around (trees, posts, the mailbox, the AC unit). Check the gate width too, because it decides which mower fits in the back.

2. Minutes per 1,000 square feet, by mower

NALP, the landscape industry's trade association, publishes sample production rates by mower size and difficulty: easy is wide open and flat, moderate has some obstacles and slopes, difficult has many of both. The times run from arrival and include unloading and loading.⁵ Here they are, converted to minutes per 1,000 square feet (my arithmetic: 60,000 divided by the rate).

NALP is blunt about these: "You should not use these rates for bidding purposes until you verify that they work for your company."⁵ Time a few of your own lawns and type your numbers over them. The yellow cells are there for that.

3. Trimming, edging, blowing and the drive

The same NALP sheet has the rest of a visit: hard edges at 9,000 linear feet an hour, string trimming along edges at 1,500, 50 to 75 obstacles an hour, and a backpack blower at 25,000 square feet an hour, where the area to blow is the hard edges times 3 feet.⁵ On a small residential lawn the trimming often takes longer than the mowing. Then add the drive to the stop. Those minutes are paid too, and a two-person crew pays them twice.

The lawn care quote, filled in

The Example lawn quote tab prices a made-up lawn on a 12,000 square foot lot (80 by 150 feet), mowed weekly with a 52-inch rider by one person. The hourly rate is the one the lawn care price sheet works out in its example: $45,000 of pay and $25,000 of costs over 960 route hours with a 15% margin, $85.78 an hour. The rest is a made-up example to show the math.

All in, that's 4.7 person-minutes per 1,000 square feet of turf (37.40 ÷ 8). It's also the same $55 a cut and $193 a month the lawn care pricing page gets for a 10,000 to 20,000 square foot lot from a flat 30 minutes on site: this lawn's 29.4 minutes, built up task by task, land in the same place. Swap the rider for a 21-inch mower and mowing alone takes 48 minutes, the visit 77, and the price $115. Owners on the lawn care pricing page charge $45 to $65 a cut for a standard yard, so on a lawn this size the 21-inch mower is the thing to fix. With the rider, trimming is the biggest line at 12 minutes, more than the mowing, which is why a yard with a long fence and lots of beds should cost more than its square footage says.

Landscaping install estimate: quantities first

An install is priced once, and nearly every mistake on one is a quantity. Get the yards, pallets and hours right and the price follows from your unit costs and markups. The install tab takes the measurements and fills in the rest.

Mulch, soil and compost: cubic yards

Clemson Extension's rule: one cubic yard covers 324 square feet 1 inch deep, so cubic yards are square feet times the depth in inches, divided by 324. Fine wood and bark mulch shouldn't go deeper than 2 to 3 inches, or it can suffocate roots.⁹ A 900 square foot bed topped up 2 inches is 900 × 2 ÷ 324 = 5.56 cubic yards. The sheet rounds up to the half yard, 6.0, because the supplier doesn't deliver 5.56. Write the depth on the estimate. If the crew spreads 3 inches on a 2-inch price, that's 50% more mulch nobody pays for.

Sod: pallets, extra and the bed under it

Purdue Extension's sod guide: sod is sold by the square yard (square feet ÷ 9), a pallet typically holds about 50 square yards (450 square feet), and you order about 10% extra for cuts at edges and corners. Where the soil lacks organic matter, it suggests 1 to 3 cubic yards of compost per 1,000 square feet, mixed 6 to 8 inches deep. Sod weighs about 35 to 40 pounds a square yard.¹⁰ Pallet sizes vary by farm, so the sheet takes yours. That weight matters on the way out too: what you cut off an old lawn, soil and all, is likely to weigh at least that much, and the landfill charges by the ton.

Plants: count by container size

List each plant by species, container size and count, because a #1 and a #3 of the same shrub are different jobs at different prices. Planting time goes up with the container. One contractor's estimating times on LawnSite: 0.2 hours for a #1, 0.4 for a #3, 0.6 for a #5, 0.9 for a #7 or #10 and 1.2 for a #20.⁶ That table is from 2004 and on the slow side. A crew that's "humping it" puts in 15 to 20 three-gallon plants an hour, a landscaper wrote in June.⁷ Your soil, access and crew sit somewhere between. Time a job and use your own.

Labor hours from production rates

Every labor line in the install tab is a measurement divided by a rate, or a count times hours each. Mulch uses NALP's 2.5 cubic yards an hour by hand when it's moved less than 100 feet.⁵ Sod laying uses 225 square feet a person-hour: a LawnSite owner put two people at 5 or 6 hours to lay 2,500 square feet, about 210 to 250.⁸ Weeding a neglected bed, cutting new edges by hand, pulling out old shrubs, cutting out old sod and grading are marked as made-up examples, because I didn't find a published rate I'd trust. NALP's bed and edging rates are for upkeep on beds that are already in shape.⁵ Add a line for loading, driving and unloading each day. It's the hour new owners forget.

Markup and margin

Labor gets its price from the margin you want: at a $30 loaded cost and a 50% gross margin, a person-hour sells for $60, a 100% markup. Materials and pass-through costs carry smaller markups, so a sod-heavy option earns a lower percentage than a labor-heavy one. The sheet shows gross margin and gross margin per person-hour for each option, which is the fairer way to compare them. The contractor markup page has the conversion between markup and margin, and why the two get mixed up.

The landscaping estimate, filled in

The Example install tab prices the front yard of the same house in three options. Good: weed and clean out 900 square feet of beds, re-cut 260 feet of edge by hand, 2 inches of shredded hardwood mulch. Better adds: take out 4 overgrown shrubs, plant 6 shrubs in #3 containers and 12 perennials in #1s. Best adds a #7 Japanese maple and new sod on the 1,200 square foot front lawn. Quantities: 6 cubic yards of mulch; 1,200 × 1.10 = 1,320 square feet of sod, which is 3 pallets of 450; 1.5 cubic yards of compost at 1 per 1,000 square feet; and 1,200 ÷ 9 × 37.5 ÷ 2,000 = 2.5 tons of old sod. Labor costs $30 an hour and sells for $60, materials carry 35% and delivery, rentals and dump fees 15%. Every cost is a made-up example.

Gross margin comes out at 36.9% on Good, 37.8% on Better and 34.2% on Best. Per person-hour it runs the other way: $41.74, $42.75 and $48.89. Best has the lowest percentage because sod, compost and rentals carry smaller markups than labor, and the most per crew-hour because those materials add margin dollars without adding many hours. The sod work alone, old lawn cut out and hauled away, comes to about $1.82 a square foot. With a 25% deposit the customer pays $215.06, $435.34 or $1,023.94 at signing. In California none of those would be allowed: the cap there is $86.03, $174.14 or $409.58 (more on that below).

Good, better, best: how to set up the options

Three options turn "yes or no" into "which one," and the middle one is usually the one you want sold. Build Good as the job the customer asked for, done properly. Make Better the one you'd recommend, and Best the one that fixes everything you saw on the walk. Keep each option a superset of the one before, so the customer compares one list that grows instead of three different jobs.

• Lawn care: Good is weekly mowing ($1,540 a season, $193 a month). Better adds spring and fall cleanups and two shrub trimmings ($2,415, $302 a month). Best adds a 7-round fertilizer and weed control program at the lawn care price sheet's $70 a round for 8,000 square feet, and a core aeration at 2.25 times a round, $160 ($3,065, $384 a month).
• Install: Good is the bed refresh ($860.25), Better adds the new plants ($1,741.35), Best adds the tree and the new lawn ($4,095.75).

In the sheet, lawn services get a Y under each option that includes them; install lines get an option number, 1, 2 or 3, and each option adds the lines up to its number. The customer copy shows a check mark under each option for every line and the three totals, with the one you recommend named under them. Weed control has one catch: in most states, spraying for hire needs a pesticide license, and the lawn care pricing page has where to find your state's agency. Don't put a treatment program in Best until you hold it.

What to put in scope and exclusions

The scope says what the customer gets in words they'd use. The exclusions say what they don't, before they assume it. Most arguments after a landscaping job are about something nobody wrote down.

Lawn care scope and exclusions

• Each visit: mow, string-trim around beds, fences, trees and obstacles, edge walks, driveway and curb, blow clippings off hard surfaces. Say whether clippings are mulched or bagged.
• The season: first and last week, how many visits, weekly or every two weeks.
• Rain and drought: when a rained-out visit is made up, and whether a drought week is billed.
• The first cut: what you charge if the grass is overgrown when you start.
• Not included unless it's in their option: leaf removal, bed weeding, mulch, fertilizer and weed control, irrigation repairs, damage to sprinkler heads, lights or lines nobody marked, and damage from objects hidden in the grass.

A season quote turns into a seasonal agreement once it's signed. The rules for billing it monthly, skipped visits and cancelling mid-season belong in the lawn care and landscaping contract template.

Install scope and exclusions

• The plant list: species, container size and count, with the right to substitute an equal plant if one's out of stock.
• Mulch type and depth, sod type and area, the bed edges, and what gets hauled away.
• 811 before digging. PHMSA, the federal pipeline safety agency, says every digging project needs a call to the one-call center first, "even small projects like planting trees or shrubs," and the call is free.¹¹ The locate marks utility lines, so put private lines (low-voltage lighting, sprinklers, a line to a shed) on the customer to point out.
• The plant warranty and its conditions: how long, one replacement per plant, and only with the irrigation running or watering as instructed. No cover for pets, deer, drought or neglect.
• Not included: irrigation changes or repairs (the irrigation pricing page covers pricing those separately), grading or drainage outside the areas listed, watering after you leave, plants the customer supplies.

How long should a landscaping quote stay valid?

Thirty days is the usual default, and the template's example uses it. Shorter is common when prices move. "My quotes are good for 30 days max. During the busy season I even drop it to 10 days," a landscaper wrote on r/landscaping.¹⁵ Another: "my estimates expire after 15 days. If I have to come back it's 75$ per estimate after."¹⁶ Sod and plant prices move with the season, nurseries run out of the plant you listed, and bulk prices change between fall and spring. A season quote sent in November for April is the exception: date it, and hold the price until the season starts if you're happy to.

Whatever you pick, print the date on the estimate and say what happens after it: a new price, a second visit fee, or both.

Deposits and the payment schedule

Check your state before you copy anyone's deposit. California's home improvement law names landscaping in its definition, and a home improvement down payment "shall not exceed one thousand dollars ($1,000) or 10 percent of the contract amount, whichever amount is less."^{12, 13} That's why the install tab shows the California cap next to each option's deposit. Other states have their own rules, or none.

Where there's no cap, owners split the job up. One r/landscaping reply: "I ask for 30% deposit, 50% 2nd payment. 20% final payment."¹⁷ A deposit that pays for the plants and the sod you're ordering for this customer is easy to explain. Mowing takes no deposit at all: bill each visit or a flat monthly amount, ideally to a card on file.

Sales tax on lawn care and landscaping

It depends on the state, and it can touch the mowing as well as the materials. Texas, for one, lists "Planting, mowing, trimming and edging grass or other ground cover" as taxable landscaping and lawn care services, and says to state nontaxable charges separately, or the whole charge is presumed taxable when the taxable part is more than 5%. A landscape designer's design fee isn't taxable there.¹⁴ Both tabs have a sales tax rate; set it to your state's rule.

How to use the template

1. Copy the Google Sheet or open the .xlsx. Yellow cells are inputs, green cells are formulas. Fill in your company block once on each tab.
2. Set your numbers: the hourly rate, rounding and minimum on the lawn tab; labor cost, margin and markups on the install tab. The lawn care price sheet works out an hourly rate from your year if you don't have one.
3. Print the PDF or Word form and walk the property. Page 3 has the quantity math and the production rates.
4. Type the measurements. Minutes, quantities and hours fill in. Type over any production rate with your crew's.
5. Type unit costs from your supplier, nursery and rental yard, set the options, and check the bottom: price per visit and season, or each option's total, margin and margin per person-hour.
6. Fill in the scope, exclusions and terms, then print the customer copy tab or save it as a PDF. It shows prices and never your costs. Delete the example tabs before your first real one.

More for lawn care and landscaping companies

• Lawn care pricing: what owners charge per cut, per acre and per application, with a free price sheet.
• Lawn care and landscaping contract template: the seasonal agreement, with monthly card billing and a rain rule.
• Landscaping invoice template: billing the job once it's done.
• Lawn care business license: what your state asks for before you mow or spray for pay.
• Snow removal pricing and the snow removal contract template, for the winter half of the year.
• Irrigation pricing and the sprinkler blowout and start-up checklist.
• Free lawn care software: nine free plans compared, with free ways to measure a lawn.

When the spreadsheet stops being enough

The measuring and the cost build-up stay in a sheet like this one. Deepsel has no lawn measuring, no production rates and no quantity math: it won't turn a bed into cubic yards or a lawn into minutes. What it does is the part after the math, when the customer's version has to go out, get signed and turn into work. An estimate there can carry several options with one marked recommended, plus optional lines the customer can tick. Each line can hold an internal cost the customer never sees. Your shop-wide terms copy onto every estimate, and the valid-until date defaults to 30 days. The customer approves on screen with a signature and, if you've turned on online payments, pays a deposit by card or bank account, set as a percentage or a dollar amount, which then shows as a credit on the final invoice. An approved estimate converts to a job, and the job to an invoice. Quantities take two decimals (5.33 hours, 2.5 tons), but the unit isn't printed on the customer's line, so put it in the line's name.

For lawn and landscaping shops there's a starter price book: Price book, then Add a trade, then Landscaping & lawn adds 16 items with example prices to replace, among them mowing by yard size, spring and fall cleanups, mulch by the cubic yard, shrub trimming, fertilizer, weed control, aeration, overseeding and sod by the square foot. Its example sod price is $1.50 a square foot; the install example above works out to about $1.82 with the old lawn cut out and hauled away. The weekly mowing runs as a recurring job series on every plan, Free included, with each finished visit invoiced on its own. Charging a flat monthly price to a card on file is the service plans module on Pro, and so is saving a good, better, best estimate as a template for the next one. Free covers 30 estimates and 30 invoices a month for your whole team, with no card to start; Pro is $29 a month for unlimited estimates and invoices. Every plan is on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

What should a landscaping estimate include?

Your company, license number if your state requires one, the customer and property, an estimate number, the date and a valid-until date. Then the measurements the price rests on (bed square feet, mulch depth, lawn area, plants by container size and count), the work and materials as priced lines, delivery, rentals and dump fees, sales tax where your state charges it, and the total. Add the options if you offer more than one, what's not included, the plant warranty and its conditions, the deposit and when the balance is due, and signature lines. Keep your costs and markup on your own copy.

How do you write a lawn care quote?

Measure the turf (the lot minus the house, paving and beds), then work out the minutes a visit takes: mowing at your mower's square feet per hour, plus edging, trimming, obstacles, blowing and the drive. Multiply the person-minutes by your hourly rate, round up and check it against your minimum. Then multiply by the visits in the season and divide by the months you bill. In the example on this page, an 8,000 square foot lawn takes 37.4 person-minutes, which is $55 a visit, $1,540 for 28 visits, or $193 a month over 8 months.

How long does it take to mow 1,000 square feet?

On NALP's sample production rates, about 6 minutes with a 21-inch mower on a moderate lawn, 2.7 with a 36-inch walk-behind, 1.9 with a 42 to 48-inch walk-behind and 1.0 with a 52 to 61-inch rider. Those times run from arrival and include unloading and loading. Trimming, edging and blowing come on top. NALP says to check the rates against your own crew before you bid on them.

How do I calculate how much mulch I need?

Square feet of bed times the depth in inches, divided by 324. One cubic yard covers 324 square feet 1 inch deep, 162 at 2 inches and 108 at 3 inches, by Clemson Extension's numbers. A 900 square foot bed at 2 inches is 5.56 cubic yards, so order 6. Clemson says fine wood mulch shouldn't go deeper than 2 to 3 inches.

How long should a landscaping estimate be valid?

30 days is the common default, and it's what Deepsel sets unless you change it. Owners on Reddit cut it to 10 or 15 days in the busy season, because sod, plant and material prices and plant availability move with the season. Put the date on the estimate and say what happens after it: a new price, or a fee for a second visit.

How much deposit should a landscaper take?

Check your state first. California counts landscaping as home improvement and caps a down payment at $1,000 or 10% of the contract, whichever is less. Where there's no cap, owners take anything from a small booking deposit to 30% at signing with progress payments after. A deposit that covers the plants and the sod, ordered for this job, is easy to explain.

Is there a landscaping estimate template in Excel?

Yes. The workbook on this page opens in Excel or copies into Google Sheets. One tab prices a lawn care season from the lawn's measurements, another prices an install from measurements to cubic yards, pallets and labor hours, both with good, better and best options and a customer copy that shows prices and never your costs. There are filled-in examples of both, and a printable version in Word, PDF or Google Docs for the site visit.

Sources

1. Smartsheet, "Landscaping Estimate Template" (IC-Landscaping-Estimate-9256-PDF.pdf), #1 on Google for "landscaping estimate template" on November 10, 2026 - fields for client, location, customer, job and estimate IDs, "SEASONAL / REPEAT / ONE-TIME JOB," dates, terms of service and work description; a labor table (description, hours, rate, amount), a materials table (description, quantity, price per unit, amount), tax rate, other cost and total estimate. smartsheet.com, retrieved November 10, 2026.
2. Estimation Builder, "Landscaping Estimate Template: How to Price Landscaping Jobs Without Guessing" (April 11, 2026) - "Cubic Yards = (Square Feet x Depth in Inches) / 324"; a front yard bed refresh example totaling $4,777.50; "Download the sample landscaping estimate PDF." estimationbuilder.com, retrieved November 10, 2026.
3. Staxen, "Landscaping Estimate Template: Word, Excel, PDF" (updated October 15, 2026) - downloads in Word, "Excel (.xlsx, with formulas)," PDF and CSV; "The Excel file totals every line, each section, tax, the deposit and the balance"; sections for site prep and soil, lawn and planting, hardscape, irrigation and labor. getstaxen.com, retrieved November 10, 2026.
4. EstimationPro AI, "Lawn Care Estimate Template (Free, Printable)" (last updated October 21, 2026) - "Price per visit = crew-minutes on the stop ÷ 60 × cost per crew-hour ÷ (1 − target margin)"; "Print it or save it as a PDF." estimationpro.ai, retrieved November 10, 2026.
5. National Association of Landscape Professionals, "Sample Production Rates" (Estimating Maintenance, 2019) - mowing rates by mower and difficulty, e.g. "21" Mower Easy 12,500 Sq. Ft/hr Moderate 10,000 Sq. Ft/hr Difficult 7,500 Sq. Ft/hr"; "Note: The above times are from arrival at the job and include unloading and loading the equipment for departure"; hard edges 9,000 lin. ft/hr, soft edges 4,000, string trim edges 1,500 lin. ft/hr, obstacles 50-75/hr; backpack blower 25,000 sq. ft/hr, "computing the linear ft. of hard edges and multiplying it by 3 feet"; bed detail 6,000 sq. ft/hr, "It assumes that it is done on a regular basis and will not require heavy weeding"; individual shrub pruning small 15, medium 10, large 6 an hour; mulch "Hand spread 2.5 Cu. Yds/hr," assuming it "does not have to be moved more than 100 ft"; "These are baseline rates that will help you get started. You need to adjust these rates to your equipment and conditions. You should not use these rates for bidding purposes until you verify that they work for your company." landscapeprofessionals.org (PDF), retrieved November 10, 2026.
6. LawnSite, "planting times??????" thread, a contractor's reply (March 31, 2004) - "Here's the times we use: All times are in hours per plant Qts: .15 hours #1: .2 hrs #2: .3 #3: .4 #5 or 6: .6 #7 or 10: .9 #20: 1.2." lawnsite.com, retrieved November 10, 2026.
7. r/landscaping (June 10, 2026) - "Planting 187 3 gallon plants properly is a job. If you are humping it you might get 15-20 an hour planted so it is probably 2 days of work." reddit.com, retrieved November 10, 2026.
8. LawnSite, "Sod Installation: Prep, Install, Man Hour Help" thread, an owner's reply on a 2,500 sq ft job (November 18, 2010) - "With 2 people, it will take 5 or 6 hours for laying the sod (maybe faster if you have good help), ~30 mins to roll the sod, 1 hr to till." lawnsite.com, retrieved November 10, 2026.
9. Clemson Cooperative Extension, Home & Garden Information Center, "Mulch" - "There are 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard. One cubic yard will cover a 324-square-foot area with an inch of mulch"; "Multiply your square footage by the depth desired (in inches) and divide by 324 square feet"; "Many wood and bark mulches are composed of fine particles and should not be more than 2 to 3 inches deep." hgic.clemson.edu, retrieved November 10, 2026.
10. Purdue Extension, AY-28-W, "Establishing a Lawn From Sod" - "Vendors typically sell sod by the square yard"; "Typically, one pallet of sod contains about 50 square yards (450 square feet) of sod. Order about 10 percent more sod than you anticipate needing to account for calculation errors and waste that occurs when cutting sod around corners and edges"; "Sod weighs about 35 to 40 pounds per square yard"; organic matter "at 1 to 3 cubic yards per 1,000 square feet. Mix these materials with the native soil at least 6 to 8 inches deep." extension.purdue.edu (PDF), retrieved November 10, 2026.
11. U.S. Department of Transportation, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, "Call Before You Dig!" - "Every digging project requires that you call the one-call center before digging"; "even small projects like planting trees or shrubs"; "even the call is free." phmsa.dot.gov, retrieved November 10, 2026.
12. California Business and Professions Code § 7151 - "'Home improvement' means the repairing, remodeling, altering, converting, or modernizing of, or adding to, residential property ... and shall include, but not be limited to, the construction, erection, installation, replacement, or improvement of driveways, swimming pools, ... landscaping, fences." leginfo.legislature.ca.gov, retrieved November 10, 2026.
13. California Business and Professions Code § 7159.5(a)(3) - "If a downpayment will be charged, the downpayment shall not exceed one thousand dollars ($1,000) or 10 percent of the contract amount, whichever amount is less." leginfo.legislature.ca.gov, retrieved November 10, 2026.
14. Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, "Landscaping and Lawn Care Services" (publication 94-112) - taxable services include "Planting, mowing, trimming and edging grass or other ground cover"; "You should separately state charges for nontaxable services from charges for taxable services. Otherwise, your total charge will be presumed taxable if the taxable portion is greater than 5 percent"; "The professional services of landscape designers and architects are not subject to sales and use tax." comptroller.texas.gov, retrieved November 10, 2026.
15. r/landscaping (June 23, 2025) - "My quotes are good for 30 days max. During the busy season I even drop it to 10 days." reddit.com, retrieved November 10, 2026.
16. r/landscaping, "I'm starting my own landscaping work. Is quoting for free 'industry standard'" (August 10, 2024) - "Landscape contractor here, I only offer the first estimate for free and my estimates expire after 15 days. If I have to come back it's 75$ per estimate after." reddit.com, retrieved November 10, 2026.
17. r/landscaping, "Is it normal for a landscaper to want 60 percent upfront?" (October 13, 2024) - "I ask for 30% deposit, 50% 2nd payment. 20% final payment." reddit.com, retrieved November 10, 2026.