Most of your policy is priced on the work you do least.
Commercial insurance for landscaping, grounds maintenance and lawn care, written around the operations that push an account out of preferred appetite, not the ones that keep it there.
Tell us the situation.
One licensed human replies the same business day — not five agents, not an auto-responder. If the policy you have is already the right one, we will tell you.
We use this to quote and service your insurance, and we do not sell it or pass it to lead networks. Privacy policy.
Send us what you have. We’ll tell you if it’s right.
Your current policy paperwork, a renewal notice, or nothing at all. A licensed agent reads it and replies the same business day.
What landscaping businesses actually need.
General liability
Third-party bodily injury and property damage. It is the line nearly every contract names by default.
Without it — The rock a mower or trimmer throws through a window, a windshield or a passer-by is the claim this trade actually files, and it is the one that needs no negligence to happen.
Inland marine & equipment
Tools, equipment and property in transit. It picks up exactly where commercial property stops, which is the moment the item leaves the building.
Without it — Mowers, trimmers, blowers and the trailer they live on are stolen off job sites constantly, and a commercial property policy stops at the yard gate.
Workers compensation
Required in almost every state the moment you have employees. Priced on payroll and class code, which is why the class code is worth arguing about.
Without it — Blades, chippers, heat and highway-shoulder work produce injuries that become uncapped claims against the business.
Commercial auto
Vehicles the business owns and the people who drive them for work.
Without it — Trucks towing loaded trailers all day are the largest severity exposure on the account, and personal auto declines the moment it learns the trip was work.
Contractors pollution liability
Bodily injury, property damage and clean-up caused by a pollutant your work released: chemical drift, run-off, fuel spills. The standard general liability form excludes all of it.
Without it — Herbicide drift onto a neighboring garden, fertiliser run-off into a storm drain, or a hydraulic line split on a paver driveway are all excluded by the pollution wording on a standard general liability policy.
Umbrella & excess liability
Extra limit stacked above general liability, auto and employers liability. Usually the cheapest million dollars on the policy.
Without it — One serious auto or injury claim exhausts a $1M primary limit, and municipal and HOA contracts often require more than that before you start.
Commercial property
Buildings and contents, valued at what it costs to rebuild today rather than what you paid.
Without it — The yard, the shop and the equipment inside them still need replacing after a fire.
Surety bonds
License, bid and performance bonds. A bond guarantees you will finish the job. It protects the other party, not you, which is the part most people get wrong.
Without it — Municipal and commercial grounds contracts are bid with a bond, and the license itself requires one in states like California.
What landscaping and lawn care companies we placed in 2025 and 2026 actually paid.
These are annual premiums from policies we bound, effective January 2025 to October 2026. We show the median and the middle half of what clients paid, never the cheapest or the most expensive, and only for lines where at least five businesses stand behind the figure.
- Commercial auto
- $7,920median a year
- Middle half: $3,150 to $12,240
- 16 policies from 10 businesses
- Workers compensation
- $1,940median a year
- Middle half: $1,530 to $2,580
- 17 policies from 14 businesses
- Business owners or package policy (property and liability together)
- $3,690median a year
- Middle half: $2,830 to $5,410
- 13 policies from 9 businesses
Payroll moves workers compensation more than anything else, and the services you provide, your limits and your claims history move the rest, so treat these as a sense of scale rather than a quote. Source: Boring Insurance bound policies, cancelled policies and test records excluded, refreshed 2026-10-04.
Businesses like this one, with their own page.
Every one of these is written for that specific operation — the coverages it needs, the questions underwriters ask it, and what it usually gets wrong.
- Lawn Care Businesses
Lawn care is one of the most common small businesses in the country and one of the easiest to insure well, because the exposures are known: a thrown object from a mower, a chemical applied wrongly, a trailer and a truck on the road all day, and a crew that gets hurt. General liability, commercial auto and workers compensation are the three policies, and the equipment floater is the fourth for anyone with more than a push mower. We place them for solo operators through multi-crew companies, and the application is short for a business that can describe its services plainly.
Joe Gorman
Co-Founder | President of Commercial Lines
Came up in construction, on site and in the office, then moved into sales. Went out on a limb to become Boring’s first dedicated salesperson when the agency had no sales team at all, and now leads it. Landscaping is the class he writes most: grounds maintenance, tree work, irrigation and the spray operations that push an account out of preferred appetite.
The Grounds Guys — Franchise owners are referred to us by their corporate office. We are not affiliated with, or endorsed by, The Grounds Guys.
Five endorsements, and a certificate is none of them.
A certificate is evidence a policy existed the day it was printed — it says so on its own face. The coverage a contract is really asking for lives on the policy as named endorsements, and this is the list they come from.
- Additional insured — ongoing operationsCG 20 10Covers the general contractor for claims arising from your work while the job is in progress.Without it: They fund their own defense on a claim your work caused, then look to you for it.
- Additional insured — completed operationsCG 20 37Extends that coverage to claims arising after your work is finished.Without it: The claim arrives years later, when the policy that should have carried it has renewed several times. Cheaper policies often exclude this or do not offer it.
- Primary and non-contributoryCG 20 01Puts your policy first and stops your insurer demanding a contribution from theirs.Without it: Two insurers argue about who pays while the defense waits.
- Waiver of subrogationCG 24 04Stops your insurer recovering from the party you agreed in writing to protect.Without it: Your insurer pays, then sues your customer, which ends the relationship.
- Per-project aggregateCG 25 03Gives each job its own general aggregate instead of sharing one across the year.Without it: Another project’s claims quietly spend the limit that was meant to cover this one.
Tract, condominium and apartment work is the exception that undoes all five — an exclusion for multi-unit residential removes the coverage before any endorsement can apply. What national homebuilders require covers that in full — D.R. Horton, Pulte Group, Blackrock Homes and the rest of the national builders set the strictest terms a sub will see, and they do not negotiate them.
Contracts ask for more than these five. Every contract insurance requirement, explained, or paste your exhibit into the Contract Insurance Decoder to see the endorsement behind each clause.
How high do you work?
Third floor and above is a different account. The exposure is not only the fall — it is what gets dropped, who is underneath, and how far a tool travels before it lands. Carriers ask for a height limit and many stop at two or three stories, so work you take on because it was offered can quietly put a renewal into a market you were not in last year. Tell us the tallest job you do, not the usual one.
Residential or commercial?
Underwriters treat these as separate trades even when the work is identical. Residential carries construction-defect exposure that follows the job for years and a homeowner who sues; commercial carries bigger limits, tighter contracts and a general contractor who enforces them. A book that is mostly one prices very differently from a book that is evenly split, and the mix is usually the second question on the application.
Mario Corral had just bought a landscaping company and inherited its insurance with it. The business was paying over $50,000 a year and had been with the same agents for years, so nobody had asked in a long time whether the price still fit the operation.
We marketed the account and cut the cost in half. The argument to underwriting was Mario himself, whose other company had run claims-free for years, and that record priced the new one. A long relationship with an agent is not a reason to keep paying, and a change of ownership is the moment to find out.
“They stay on top of our rates and premiums. They notify us of any potential increase and automatically shop all options to ensure we get the best possible rates. When we initially switched to them they literally cut our premiums in half for both of our companies…”
What the insurance company will ask about your landscaping business
We read the applications the markets use for businesses in this field and pulled out what they actually ask. Have these answers ready and a quote takes a day instead of a week, because nobody has to come back to you for the missing piece.
About the business
- What is your legal business name and any other names you've operated under?
- How long have you been in business?
- What is your main line of work and what services do you provide?
- Are you a sole proprietor, partnership, corporation, or LLC?
How you operate
- How much of your work is commercial, residential, industrial, municipal, or government?
- Do you work beyond a 50-mile radius from your main location?
- What percentage of your work do you subcontract to other companies?
- Do your subcontractors carry their own insurance?
- Do you have a written contract that customers sign before work begins?
Safety and controls
- Do you have a formal safety and training program?
- Do you perform background checks on new hires?
- Do you have a written grievance policy?
- Do you make unannounced jobsite visits to check on work quality and safety?
- Do you maintain records of work orders, accident reports, and job details?
Your history
- Have you ever had a claim or loss under an errors and omissions or liability policy?
- Have you had any incident or problem on a job that could lead to a claim?
- Do you have any past or pending bankruptcy, foreclosure, or unpaid tax judgment in the last five years?
Money and people
- What are your annual receipts?
- What is your annual payroll?
- How many full-time and part-time employees do you have?
- Who is your current insurance company and what is your premium?
- Do you own any vehicles used in your business?
Have these ready
- Your last five years of claims history from your current insurer, called loss runs
- A sample customer contract showing what you agree to do and what the customer agrees to
- A list of the main equipment you use in your work
- Your formal safety and training program if you have one written down
You answer what you can; a licensed agent fills the rest with you.
What our landscaping clients ask us.
Why did my landscaping quote come back so much higher this year?
Usually because something in the operations moved you out of preferred appetite, not because rates moved. Stump grinding, tree work above the ground, retaining walls, hardscape, sprinkler installation and grading or excavation each read as a different class to an underwriter, and any one of them can take an account that was preferred and put it in the excess and surplus market. The fix is often narrower than the price suggests. Sometimes it is a description of operations that no longer matches what you actually do.
A rock came out of the mower and broke a window. Does insurance pay?
That is a general liability claim and it is the most common one in this trade: a stone thrown from a mower deck or a string trimmer into a window, a parked car or a person. You do not have to have done anything wrong for it to be your claim. What matters is whether the policy has been written for landscaping operations rather than issued off a generic contractor class, because that is where the arguments start.
Do I need different coverage for tree work?
Yes, and this is the single biggest dividing line in the class. Trimming from the ground is usually fine within a landscaping policy. Climbing, aerial lift work, removals and stump grinding are a different appetite, priced differently and declined by many carriers outright. If you do any of it, it has to be disclosed and rated: an undisclosed tree operation is how a claim gets denied and a policy gets rescinded.
I plow snow in the winter. Is that automatically covered?
No, and assuming it is is a common and expensive mistake. Snow and ice operations usually need to be endorsed onto both the general liability and the commercial auto policy, and a general liability policy that has not been endorsed for it simply does not respond to a slip-and-fall on a lot you cleared. In some states the indemnity clause in your snow contract is void by statute regardless of what you signed.
What does insurance for a landscaper cost?
It is priced on payroll and revenue, on the split between maintenance and installation, and heavily on the operations above. Two companies with identical revenue can price very differently if one grinds stumps and one does not. We will not publish an average, because the average is drawn from mowing-only accounts and is not the number a full-service company is going to see.
Do you write pesticide and herbicide application?
Yes, and it needs pollution coverage to be worth anything. The standard general liability form carries a pollution exclusion, and most carriers writing applicators add a total pollution exclusion on top, which removes drift, overspray and run-off, the three things that actually go wrong. Either the exclusion is bought back or a separate pollution policy sits behind it.
What does liability insurance for landscapers cover?
General liability for a landscaping crew pays for damage your work does to other people and their property. The everyday claim is a stone thrown from a mower deck or a trimmer into a window or a parked car. It also carries completed operations, which responds when a retaining wall or a paver patio fails a year after you left. Watch two exclusions. Herbicide drift falls under the pollution exclusion unless it is bought back, and tree work above the ground is usually rated separately or excluded outright.
My crew is paid on 1099s. Does my workers comp cover them?
If you schedule them, supervise them and they cut the lawns your company sells, they are your employees on every state’s test and the policy covers them whatever the tax form says. The audit will add their pay to your payroll at the landscaping rate and bill you for it after the year ends, which is the surprise that produces most of the calls we get on this. A sub with their own trucks, clients and certificate is the only one who is not.
Is landscaping insurance different in Texas?
In one way that matters. Texas does not require most private employers to carry workers compensation, but the property managers and municipalities handing out grounds contracts require it anyway, so a Texas crew bidding that work carries it. The other wrinkle is chemicals. Applying herbicides or pesticides to lawns and ornamentals for hire takes a license from the Texas Department of Agriculture, and a carrier writing the general liability will ask for the license number before rating the pollution buy-back.
Do garden designers and landscape architects need the same policy?
Not the same one. A designer who draws the plan and never installs it has a professional liability exposure, because the claim is that the drainage grade or the plant selection was wrong, and general liability does not answer for advice. A firm that installs has the general liability exposure above. Most landscape design firms we see do both, so they carry both, and the work is describing design revenue and installation revenue separately on the application so neither policy is priced on the other one’s work.
Commercial insurance is 96% of what we do — it is not a department here, it is the whole business. Not ready to talk? The guides answer the questions this page raises in more depth. Already insured with us and need a certificate or a policy change? Ask the service team rather than starting a quote — it is faster and it goes to the people whose job it is. We also write home and auto, which is usually cheaper alongside the business policy than apart from it.