Home Business

4. Landscaping
Leverage your love of land to earn money.


If you love working outdoors and hate being tied down to one location, you may want to consider a career in landscaping. Landscapers design, install, and maintain landscaped areas for homes, offices, parks, gardens, playgrounds, golf courses, and recreational areas.

The typical duties of a landscaper include grading property, installing sprinkler systems and outdoor lighting, transplanting new vegetation such as lawns and trees, installing rock gardens or flower patches, fertilizing, watering, and trimming shrubbery. They could also be called upon to build decks or fences.

Landscapers are hired on a project basis by landscaping and construction firms as well as directly by end clients such as homes and offices.

In most cases, you don’t need any formal education, and even a high school diploma may not be required in some cases.

You should be very comfortable with landscaping tools such as hedge trimmers and powered equipment, always utilizing proper safety measures, and you must become certified in the use of chemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers.

Many landscaping jobs are seasonal, but you could find yourself doing work in all kinds of weather. You must be physically fit, as the work does require manual labor. But you must be a problem solver as well, able to recognize plant diseases or insect infestations, and deal with them swiftly. In this regard it’s helpful to have a “green thumb.”

A landscaper should be well-organized and have good communication skills to discuss landscape projects with their clients. You must also be able to work under pressure to meet deadlines, and a good driving record is a plus.

You’ll need a truck or van capable of transporting your equipment and landscaping supplies, basic tools such as hedge trimmers and rakes, powered tools such as a “weedeater” and lawnmower, and a cellphone. You’ll need to get certified as a landscaping contractor, and you’ll initially need to invest in local advertisting. But you should be generating as many word-or-mouth referrals as you can, based on your excellent service!

If you own a truck already, it’s possible to get started for around $3,000. By working part-time at nights and weekends, you can expect to earn up to 36,000 a year.  With a year of experience under your belt and working full-time with additional equipment and/or workers, you can take that amount to $80,000 or even more.