Splitting Landscaping Duties

Started by EricB13 • 8 replies • 54 views

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EricB13 (Illinois)
Posts: 29

Posted:

We have a large single family association with two ponds, a clubhouse area, two parks, and a general parkway that needs to be maintained. We have monument plantings at both of our entrances, along with two smaller monuments within the subdivision. Along with that is obviously tree rings, other plantings, etc.

My question is we've always been told it's good to go with one landscaping company to take care of everything, but I'm starting to feel like we would A) save money by splitting it out and 2) get more responsive maintenance for certain tasks like bush trimming & edging.

I totally understand the simplicity of a single vendor. We've also gotten RFPs on these big companies and our pricing in comparison makes sense. But like mentioned above, I feel like breaking the work out by mowing, bed planting, and trimming/cutting/edging would be more cost effective and better quality.

JackS20 (North Carolina)
Posts: 258

Posted:

go for it. Most of the big landscaping companies I've dealt with know many HOA boards are lazy and are some of hte most landscaping costs around By simply gettting quotes from other vendors you will likely save $$$$

BillD16 (Texas)
Posts: 940

Posted:

I have zero experience with doing this with landscaping, but I know that my wife’s former employer (a contractor in another industry) simply refused to split contracts. A landscaper might do the same.

On the other hand, it’s interesting to speculate that if you could get two landscapers - let’s call the “The Jets” and “The Sharks” - to agree to this, it might encourage a natural competition, which might lead to lower costs and better service. Notice I say might … it might also lead to fistfights, sabotage, and worse between the two outfits. You’d probably want to establish a very firm geographical boundary between Jets territory and Sharks territory, and even then, you’ll likely still need to deal with occasional and literal turf wars.

I’m reminded of the Brigadoonians and the anti-Brigadoonians (Brigadoons and Brigadon’ts?) who have appeared here in the past.

Bill

HOA Board ex-President
Austin, Texas USA

“You can’t put too much water in a nuclear reactor”

EricB13 (Illinois)
Posts: 29

Posted:

Quote:

Posted By BillD16 on 06/02/2026, 1:35 PM

I have zero experience with doing this with landscaping, but I know that my wife’s former employer (a contractor in another industry) simply refused to split contracts. A landscaper might do the same.

On the other hand, it’s interesting to speculate that if you could get two landscapers - let’s call the “The Jets” and “The Sharks” - to agree to this, it might encourage a natural competition, which might lead to lower costs and better service. Notice I say might … it might also lead to fistfights, sabotage, and worse between the two outfits. You’d probably want to establish a very firm geographical boundary between Jets territory and Sharks territory, and even then, you’ll likely still need to deal with occasional and literal turf wars.

I’m reminded of the Brigadoonians and the anti-Brigadoonians (Brigadoons and Brigadon’ts?) who have appeared here in the past.

Bill

It's entirely possible that they wouldn't want to split work, but I'd like to think that there are enough companies in our area where they would be happy to take on work no matter what. Especially if some of the work requires detail/time vs normal mowing.

We had briefly talked about splitting the community in half with two companies, but felt like that is what could be more problematic because one half could look better than the other versus our main concern of specific tasks not being done well/timely.

TimB4 (Tennessee)
Posts: 21,044

Posted:

As Jack said, obtain bids every time the contract is near it's end.

Allow the existing company to bid and solicit at least two more.
You can use the current contract wording to write your request for a proposal (as you want to compare apples to apples).

This is the only way you will know if you are paying market rate or if you are being taken advantage of.

BryonW (Massachusetts)
Posts: 55

Posted:

I also say go for it.

Maybe a few vendors would refuse to split the work, but, there should be many more who are OK with it.

I would say a good scope of work division would be grass vs not grass. EG:
Company A: mowing, and edging all grass. Plus any aerating, fertilizer, etc.
Company B: bed plantings, mulch, trimming bushes/trees.

KellyM3 (North Carolina)
Posts: 2,239

Posted:

Don't split the landscaping duties. Rebid the entire project at the appropriate time of the contract year. With two vendors on site, you risk having two companies point fingers at each other when you have a dispute about plantings, plant deaths, etc.

If you want to volunteer to micro-manage, then it's a perfect scenario for you or your board of directors.

ElleN (Idaho)
Posts: 1,289

Posted:

Quote:

Posted By KellyM3 on 06/03/2026, 7:26 PM

Don't split the landscaping duties. Rebid the entire project at the appropriate time of the contract year. With two vendors on site, you risk having two companies point fingers at each other when you have a dispute about plantings, plant deaths, etc.

I agree.

At an 1800 SFH HOA where I was on the board, for a while the HOA had two contractors performing certain landscaping tasks. When a $1000 backflow preventer failed, blame could reasonably be assigned to either contractor. Both contractors hated the (inevitable) overlap of responsibility.

Lesson learned.

EricB13 (Illinois)
Posts: 29

Posted:

Quote:

Posted By KellyM3 on 06/03/2026, 8:26 PM

Don't split the landscaping duties. Rebid the entire project at the appropriate time of the contract year. With two vendors on site, you risk having two companies point fingers at each other when you have a dispute about plantings, plant deaths, etc.

If you want to volunteer to micro-manage, then it's a perfect scenario for you or your board of directors.

I wouldn't classify our call-outs on service as micro managing. We have two year contracts with a 3rd year extension and yeah, maybe we just haven't found the right company to handle it all. On the flip side, that's why I was asking about splitting tasks because then it's a lot easier to swap vendors out.

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