How to start a gardening business in New Zealand

Kiwis rightly take great pride in their gardens. What they don’t necessarily have is the spare time to keep their gardens as maintained and presentable as they could be. You can probably see where we’re going here. 

Yes, we’re talking about that dream you may have: graduating from gardening as a hobby or passion, to doing it for a living. If your family can barely keep you out of your own garden, whiling away the hours cutting the grass, trimming the hedges, and tackling stubborn weeds, this might be a clue that launching as a professional gardening services provider could be for you. After all, there is strong and consistent demand for such services, and with the right strategy, it can be a profitable business. The flexibility to work your own hours is just a cherry on top.

So, let’s jump into what starting a gardening business involves. 

Step 1: Writing a business plan to establish viability

Julia knows she can’t just think, “Well, loads of people have gardens… There will probably be demand there.” So, she swiftly gets on with writing a business plan. 

This helps her quickly establish whether her business idea is workable. It also gets her to think about the specific target market she can focus on, the amount of funding she requires for her gardening business, and how she could raise that funding. 

Step 2: Deciding on a name for the business 

Paying close attention to online resources that inform her on how to choose the best name for a company, Julia comes up with a catchy name for her new business. She checks it’s available with the NZ Companies Office and registers it. She also registers a domain name for her website and a professional email.

Step 3: Choosing a business structure 

After discussing the differences between the most common business structures with a friend who has worked as a sole trader, she decides to take this path, at least for now. 

She likes the control over her business that operating this way will give her. However, she is open-minded about eventually setting up as a company. 

Step 4: Registering the gardening business 

Julia informs Inland Revenue (IR) that she has begun working as a sole trader by logging into her MyIR account and sending the relevant notification. 

Step 5: Getting kitted out with the right equipment 

Naturally, investing in the necessary equipment to deliver your gardening services is likely to be a hefty expense. That’s all the more reason you have pored over this detail in your business plan. 

The specific gardening services you will offer, the intended scale of your business, and who you will target as customers will greatly influence what equipment you buy or hire. 

Ensure you have an appropriate vehicle for carrying your gardening equipment. You will need to figure out how much weight the vehicle must be able to carry safely and how secure your chosen vehicle will be against the potential theft of your tools. 

If you decide to hire your gardening equipment, a hire purchase agreement could bring you the following advantages: 

• The right to use the equipment for some time with regular payment instalments 
• The option to purchase the equipment at the end of the agreement period. 

Step 6: Putting the right insurance in place 

Various forms of business insurance exist, but that doesn’t mean a brand-new gardening business needs to invest in all of them. We encourage you to consult an insurance broker for tailored advice on the cover for your gardening business. In general, the minimum policies you should consider are: 

Public liability insurance

This type of cover will protect you from the financial fallout that can occur due to accidents or damage on the job. For example, accidentally smashing a client’s window with a ladder, or a passerby tripping over your wheelbarrow and suffering an injury as a result. 

If you don’t want to be the one personally footing the bill for repair costs, medical bills, or even legal fees in the event of the above happening, you’ll want to have public liability insurance in place. Indeed, many clients won’t hire you without it. 

Property insurance

While public liability cover helps protect your clients’ property, property insurance protects your own property and assets against risks such as theft, fire, or weather damage. 

For example, if something happens to your lawnmower or another essential tool while you’re “on the job” and you don’t have insurance for it, you’ll need to pay for a replacement from your pocket. 

Step 7: Marketing the business’s gardening services 

Naturally, Julia’s handy at this. Drawing upon her digital marketing expertise, she quickly gets to work on rustling up profiles for her new business on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (she’s already got some funny gardening videos ready to roll that would be perfect for the latter). 

Julia also sets up a business profile on Neighbourly and joins local Facebook groups and gardening-themed online forums. These steps can help her begin to build local prominence with her business. 

She also has a basic WordPress website on the go and is beginning to put together her first promotional flyers and business cards. You might take a similar path to start spreading the word about your new small gardening business.

 What qualifications does a gardener need? 

In a broad sense, no particular qualifications are needed to become a professional gardener in New Zealand. 
If you have self-taught skills and knowledge of vital gardening tasks such as planting, pruning, fertilising, and spraying, this will likely take you a long way. 

However, when using certain chemicals for commercial purposes, it is important to familiarise yourself with the rules on training and certification. 

It will also greatly help if you are already a capable user of power tools and have relevant experience, such as horticultural or conservation work or driving tractors or similar heavy vehicles. 

As a would-be professional gardener, it might help to obtain a National Certificate in Horticulture (Level 4). Courses are available that focus on specific disciplines, such as amenity horticulture or landscaping. 

You may also consider whether you can join any relevant associations, such as Registered Master Landscapers, which represents landscaping professionals across NZ.

What gardening services should your business offer? 

The sheer range of different gardening services in New Zealand is dizzying, to say the least. You may find yourself specialising in any, or several, of the following. And of course, this shouldn’t be treated as an exhaustive list: 

• Lawn mowing 
• Hedge trimming 
• Garden clearance 
• Landscape design 
• Weed spraying 
• Rose pruning 
• Mulching
• Pest and disease management 
• General garden maintenance 
• Services for landlords and property managers 

However, even if you have the skills and experience to offer all the above services and more, it doesn’t mean it would necessarily be a good idea to spread yourself too thin. 

Focusing on a niche within the market is likely to help you fare better, especially as a beginner entrepreneur. For example, there’s growing demand among urban families and eco-conscious clients for help setting up raised beds and permaculture plots. You could make this a smart angle if you’re wondering how to start a vegetable garden business.

In determining the market segment to target, think about the following: 

• Which niche in the local market is not presently being catered for well by other gardening businesses? Is it garden maintenance for rental properties, invasive weeds removal, or fruit tree pruning?
• What will you be able to bring to this segment that none of your competitors offer? Talk to people in the neighbourhood to learn whether they use gardening services and whether they like the service they are getting.

What rules and regulations will apply to your Kiwi gardening business? 

The local dimension is of central importance when you are trying to launch a successful gardening business in NZ. In Wellington, for example, specific restrictions exist on reserve lands near residential areas: 

• A professional gardener, like Julia, won’t be able to plant on reserve land in Wellington without permission, even if it is right next to her client’s property. 
• She also must get approval before cutting down trees, clearing shrubs, or pruning vegetation on reserve land. 

So it pays off to invest some time in researching the pertinent laws, rules, and requirements in your area before launching your gardening business. If in doubt, check with your local Council first. 

Determining the prices of your gardening services 

Deciding what prices to charge for your gardening services might be one of the trickiest parts of the endeavour. 

Julia has done her research and knows that one of the first things she needs to do is figure out her day-to-day operating costs. You’ll need to do that, too. Otherwise, you’ll have no idea how much to charge to give yourself a healthy profit margin. 

Be sure to add up all the costs you’ll incur in running your gardening business, even those that might seem too small to be worth noting down. 

Here are the costs Julia quickly writes down (although this shouldn’t be treated as an exhaustive list in your case): 

• The gardening equipment 
• The maintenance, servicing, and repair of that equipment
• Fuel 
• Labour  
• Taxes (income and GST) 
• Vehicle costs 
• Insurance 

Aware that she is far from a “numbers person,” Julia doesn’t try to handle the finances of her gardening business on her own; she ropes in an accountant to ensure she’s on top of everything. 

As you work out the costs of your gardening services and consider what to charge, don’t forget to do the following, too: 

• Research your local competitors. There is a strong chance you won’t be alone offering gardening and lawn care services in your part of Aotearoa New Zealand. So, take a close look at their pricing approach. It will help give you a sense of the “going rate” for gardening services near you. Remember: you don’t necessarily need to match or undercut the prices of your industry rivals if your prices still make your business competitive. 
• Consider how much time you spend on your business. When calculating your costs, you’ll need to consider the amount of time you devote to each job. The period it takes to get to a client’s garden, do the job, and return home… all counts. 
• Mark up the materials you use to provide your services. Think of all the materials you use to provide your gardening services in NZ, ranging from the fuel for the lawn mower to soil improvers and fertiliser. You are effectively providing these materials, not merely your skills and expertise. So, you may consider including them on your invoice at a marked-up price, instead of providing them at cost. 

Julia’s story shows that you don’t need to figure everything out before you start. With some planning, local know-how, and the right tools, it’s absolutely possible to turn a love of gardening into a solid little business. Start small, stay focused, and build it up one job at a time — just like good gardens, it’ll grow with care and consistency.