What do Landscapers Do in the Winter? Smart Off-Season Work Ideas for Landscapers

Landscapers offer a plethora of lawn care services throughout the year. But with winters knocking on the door, they are restricted with only a few landscaping services that they can offer. 

Plowing or removing snow is one of the common landscaping services in winter. But every lawn care business is not established in a snowy region. And even if it does, the intensity of winter might not be the same every year for the city to get a snowfall. 

Hence, a lawn care business cannot stick with just snow removal services for their earnings in winter. Therefore, landscapers must have multiple work ideas in the winter or off-season.

10 Work Ideas for Landscapers to Do in the Winter

The statistics by IBIS World state that the US landscaping industry generated overall revenue of around $125 billion in 2021. Not just that, it is predicted to reach $128.8 billion by the end of 2022. 

Earning such a big revenue is impossible for the industry if the landscaping services are not functional in winter. And not all the states of the United States experience snowfall or snow storms during the winter months for landscapers to get high earnings with just snow removal services. 

So, what are the winter work ideas for a lawn care business to market and offer to commercial and residential clients? How can they earn a good chunk of money even in the off-season? 

As a lawn care business owner, it is helpful for you to learn about 10 work ideas that you can offer your customers as paid landscaping services and maintain the earning flow.

1. Gutter cleaning services

Gutter cleaning needs are not specific to any season, and everyone needs them throughout the year. You might not need to invest in additional equipment to take on this service request. 

Most homeowners intend to clean their gutters right before winter. It is because due to blocked gutter lines, melted snow and ice can get collected around the house foundation or seep into the roof. As a result, it might cause severe damage. 

Therefore, this can be one of the popular winter services for lawn care businesses.

2. Plant winter trees and shrubs

If the ground at your house doesn’t freeze, the fall and winter season is perfect for transplanting shrubs, trees, and bushes. 

If you use landscape management software, you would have a record of all your existing clients. Schedule crew visit for each of these clients and take consent from the property owners to seek transplantation of their yards. 

Apart from planting the winter trees and shrubs, you can also offer other services such as trimming, pruning, and soil raking. 

Even though it is the off-season, your business can think of how the clients would want their lawn or yard to look after the winter months. 

3. Installing Christmas lights

Christmas light installation is one of the most profitable winter jobs for lawn care companies. Your crew will be ready to display their creative and design skills to regular or new clients by decorating the Christmas lights. 

Each project of Christmas light installation can help you earn a net amount of $1000, excluding the material cost and labor hours. The cost will possibly vary depending on the size of the property and the lighting display. 

With your landscaping business management software, you can schedule visits to the existing client houses and put up an upfront request for installing the holiday lights. 

With their consent, take a brief on how big the display they want and give them a nominal price quote for the same. 

This service comes with great planning and effort. You might have all the equipment to carry out this service, but you might need more hands to support you in installing holiday lights around a big property or display setup. 

Make sure you have insurance coverage for covering a potential circuit breaker overloading issue or a fire situation at the customer’s place. 

When you are done installing these lights, you must also schedule a removal service by taking the consent of the owners.

4. Winter lawn prep

As stated earlier in this article, homeowners seek winter lawn prep on priority to ensure that their lawn stays safe throughout the winter so that it can be taken care of in the summers. 

The regular customers paying you to take care of their lawn in the summer months will eventually want to keep their lawns safe in winter as well. 

Some of the services that you can offer in your winter lawn prep packages are:

• Removal of dead plants
• Lawn aeration
• Lawn fertilizing
• Draining sprinkler systems
• Removing patio furniture and lawn

5. Pressure washing

Winter and fall are probably the adequate seasons for you to offer pressure washing services to clients for different surfaces. 

If you don’t have a decent pressure washer in your set of equipment, you can get one under $200, which will last through many winters. Some of the pressure washing jobs that lawn care business owners can offer in the winter months are:

• Deck cleaning services
• Patios and porches cleaning services
• Siding and roof cleaning services
• Fence cleaning services
• Walkways and driveway cleaning services

Not just that, with a pressure washer, you can also clean out the gutters easily with less effort. The only thing important for you to keep in mind is to check out the type of detergent you use for cleaning different surfaces. 

Pressure washing with the wrong solution can damage the surface or deteriorate its appeal. So, do not neglect this consideration!

6. Leaf removal

Leaf removal is also one of the profitable winter jobs that allows you to take proper advantage of the off-season in landscaping without sticking with just the snow removal or snow plowing requests. 

Removing leaves from the yards is a labor-intensive job, and clients will often opt for hiring someone to take care of it. 

The demand for this service increases during the fall, as the dead leaves just mess up the yards and lawns. The best thing about this service is the continuity of this off-season work. 

Some clients might demand just a one-time leaf removal service, but some might call you frequently for regular leaf removal throughout the winter weather. The frequency of this service request increases if the client has a huge property with many trees around it. 

If you get a few of such clients, you will surely be busy throughout the winter and fall. Let your clients know that you can also offer services such as removing dead plants and wrapping young trees, along with leaf removal.

Following that, while you are discussing your service with the client, you should also let them know that you will remove leaves from their patios, roads, backyards, sidewalks, driveways, and every other part of their property, all-inclusive in a package.

7. Weed removal

Springs are considered the season of weeds. The temperature seems right in the spring season, which causes these plants to grow unstoppably. Therefore, when the temperatures drop during the cold weather, it becomes the right time to seek weed removal. 

Most residential and commercial property owners might be unaware of this lawn care perspective of removing weeds in winter. Therefore, take the client details from your management software and assign your crew to talk to the existing clients about removing weeds from their lawns or yard. 

Let them know that the winter months are ideal for using weed killers around the yard with all preventative measures to avoid hampering the soil fertility. Hence, this is yet another service that can offer a stable income for your business throughout the off-season.

8. Mulching

Mulching is one of the most crucial pre-winter landscaping practices. It helps in protecting the roots of plants from freezing temperatures. 

Mulching is a time-consuming job, for which people often leave it to the hands of professionals. Your regular clients will be interested in taking this service on priority, as they don’t want the money spent to plant trees in the summers to get wasted during the winter months. 

The execution cost of mulching is low, for which you will be charging for the manpower needed for this job. As it is easy to sell off this service to existing customers, you will be earning a decent profit throughout this slow season.

9. Employee training

When it is the off-season, you should not always think about earning money but also invest in something for better business outcomes in the future. You can train your employees during the off-season months to help them master additional landscaping skills to be able to acquire profits in the summer seasons. 

Apart from that, if you have newly introduced landscaping management software, count on training your staff to be acquainted with its functions. It will help you conduct the business operations smoothly and profitably.

10. Snow removal

In the end, it is the most obvious service that can help you earn a fortune in winters if your state or city snows very often – snow removal. For this, you will have to make a few investments and changes to your current service approach to start snow removal services.

You have the trucks or vehicles for carrying your landscaping equipment to different sites. You need to attach detachable snow plows to the vehicle to clear the snow from driveways and parking lots. 

Apart from that, you can also get a snow blower to blow off loose snow that often gets stuck in front of the main doors of a house or office building. 

Every time the snow falls, residents, businesses, and condo owners start to look for professionals who can be there on immediate request to clean out the snow. And as it is the prime job of the season, you can charge a good amount from your customers in exchange for the services. 

FieldCamp is the Modern-Day Landscaping Management Software you Need

Store all your client details, service history, and other important information over our landscaping business software FieldCamp. It is a perfect business management tool that allows you to schedule client visits with just one click. 

Apart from that, you can update all client requirements over this portal and send them to the assigned staff member for reference. With respect to that, they will be able to communicate well with the customers and offer the expected services. 

FieldCamp also offers invoicing and payment services. You can send invoices instantly to the customers from the software portal and get the payments processed on it as well. 

So, if this convinces you to give this management application a try, then check out our 7-day FREE trial to learn more about its features and benefits. When you are satisfied with what you experience with FieldCamp, we can proceed to integrate it permanently with your business operations. 

And then, it won’t matter if it is summer or winter, you will have the feasibility to schedule and run your business operations seamlessly through FieldCamp.