Groundskeeper & Landscaper Job Description: Template, Duties, Requirements & Pay (2026)

A groundskeeper — often posted as landscaper, landscaping laborer or grounds crew — keeps outdoor property alive and presentable — mowing, edging, planting, pruning, irrigation, leaf and snow work — usually outdoors in all weather and on a calendar that swings hard with the seasons. Below is a copy-paste groundskeeper job description template, the licensing detail that catches employers out, and what it costs to reach outdoor crews on social, from Boostpoint's campaign data.

$19.27/hr · $40,080/yrMedian pay, grounds maintenance, 2025 (BLS OOH)

1,299,200Grounds maintenance workers employed (2025)

~162,500Openings per year, 2025–35

No formal credentialTypical entry-level education

$18.82 · $22.28 · $24.50Groundskeeping · pesticide · tree trimming median, May 2025

5%Projected growth, 2025–35

What a groundskeeper does

Groundskeepers maintain outdoor property: mowing, trimming and edging, planting and mulching beds, pruning shrubs and small trees, running and repairing irrigation, applying fertiliser and pesticide where licensed, blowing and hauling leaves, and in most of the country plowing and salting through the winter. On a campus, a cemetery or a stadium the same title also means turf care, line marking and event preparation.

Employers post this same role under several titles — groundskeeper, landscaper, landscaping laborer, grounds crew — and job boards treat them as synonyms. All four map to the same BLS occupation, Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers, and the same pay data on this page. That is different from a landscape designer or landscape architect, which the BLS tracks separately as a credentialed, plan-and-design role rather than a hands-on maintenance one.

The BLS puts 1,299,200 people in grounds maintenance in 2025 at a $19.27 median hourly wage, with about 162,500 openings projected each year over the decade and no formal educational credential required to enter. Within the group, the May 2025 medians spread meaningfully: $18.82 for landscaping and groundskeeping workers, $22.28 for pesticide handlers, sprayers and applicators, and $24.50 for tree trimmers and pruners.

That spread is the most useful thing on this page. If you need someone to spray, you are hiring against a $22.28 market and a state license, not against a $18.82 mowing market — and posting one generic "groundskeeper" ad for both is why the licensed applications never arrive.

Groundskeeper job description template

Copy this into your ATS or job board, replace the bracketed fields, and cut anything that does not apply. It is ordered the way outdoor crews read: pay, hours, where, what equipment, then the rest.

Job title

Groundskeeper / Landscaper — [Full-time / Seasonal], [Property type], [City]

Summary

[Employer] is hiring groundskeepers for our [campus / community / property portfolio] in [city, state]. Pay is $[XX.XX]–$[XX.XX]/hour depending on experience and licenses. Hours are [Mon–Fri, 7am–3:30pm], with [overtime available in spring and fall] and [snow call-outs paid at time and a half]. This is [year-round work with winter grounds and snow duties / seasonal work from March through November].

Responsibilities

Mow, trim, edge and blow assigned areas on a set rotation
Plant, mulch, weed and prune beds, shrubs and small trees
Operate and maintain mowers, trimmers, blowers and [utility vehicles / skid steer]
Inspect, adjust and repair irrigation heads, lines and controllers
Apply fertiliser and [pesticide, where licensed] per label and [state] requirements
Handle seasonal work: leaf removal, storm clean-up and [snow removal and salting]
Complete daily equipment checks and report damage; keep the shop and trailers organized

Requirements

Able to work outdoors in all weather and to bend, kneel, lift [50] lbs and shovel through a full shift
Valid driver's license and a clean record [for towing trailers between sites]
Available for [7am starts] and for [snow call-outs on short notice in winter]
Reliable transport to the shop in [city]

Preferred

Previous landscaping, grounds, golf course or agricultural experience
[State] pesticide applicator license, or willingness to obtain it — we pay for training and testing
Irrigation troubleshooting or small-engine repair
Comfortable towing a trailer; [Class B / CDL] a plus, not required

Schedule and pay

$[XX.XX]–$[XX.XX]/hour; [$X.XX/hour premium once your applicator license is current]
[Mon–Fri, 7am–3:30pm]; [overtime available March–November]
[Snow call-outs paid at time and a half, with a guaranteed X-hour minimum]
[Year-round employment / seasonal March–November with rehire priority]

Benefits

Health, dental and vision from day [1 / 30 / 60]
Paid time off and [6] paid holidays
[401(k) with X% match]
[Boots and outerwear allowance]; [all equipment and PPE provided]
[Pesticide license and CEUs paid]; [posted path to crew lead]

Requirements: what to keep, what to soften, and what quietly costs you applicants

Grounds postings tend to under-describe the job and over-describe the person. Both cost applications.

Requirement	What to know
Physical demands and weather	Keep them, specifically. The BLS describes this work as usually done outdoors in all kinds of weather and as repetitive and physically demanding, with frequent bending, kneeling, lifting and shovelling. Saying so is honest, legally useful and does not deter people who already do it.
Pesticide applicator license	Know your state before you write the line. The BLS notes most states require licensing for workers who apply pesticides, and that licensing for fertiliser handlers varies by state. If you need spraying done, either hire licensed at the $22.28 market or pay for the license and say so in the ad — a differential for a current license attracts the applicants a requirement would have excluded.
Experience	Usually preferred, not required. No formal credential is needed to enter, and with roughly 162,500 openings a year an experience gate is a choice to hire slowly. Say "we will train" if you will.
Driver's license	Keep where the job genuinely involves driving between sites or towing. Where it does not, dropping it opens the role to a meaningful share of the local pool.
Seasonality	Disclose it in the first two lines. Whether this is year-round work or a March-to-November season is the single biggest question a candidate has, and hiding it produces applicants who quit in November.
Snow duty	Say it plainly, with the pay. Winter call-outs discovered after hire are a common reason grounds staff leave; stated up front with a premium and a guaranteed minimum, they become a reason to apply.

How to customize it for your setting

Commercial landscaping contractor

Crews want to know the route, the truck and who leads. Say how many properties a day, whether the crew is two or five, and what the path to crew lead looks like. Overtime in season is a selling point for this candidate, so state the months and typical hours rather than "some overtime required".

Campus, municipal and cemetery grounds

Predictability and benefits are the offer. Year-round employment, a pension or public retirement plan and a fixed schedule beat a higher hourly rate for many experienced groundskeepers. Say what the winter work actually is, because "grounds" in January is a different job.

Golf course and sports turf

This is turf work, not landscaping, and the candidates are different. Name the equipment and the early start — a 5am mow before play is the defining feature of the job, and the people who want it already know that.

Property management and HOA

The work is dispersed across sites, so the vehicle, the fuel and the daily route matter more than at a single property. State whether a company vehicle is provided and whether the role includes light maintenance beyond grounds — many do, and hiding it produces early quits.

What it costs to reach groundskeepers on social

We do not publish a groundskeeping figure — there is no grounds or landscaping family in our dataset, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What we can publish is the sector it sits nearest. Across 335 skilled trades and field service campaign-months in our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark, the median cost per applicant was $11.89, with the middle half of campaigns between $6.50 and $24.89, an apply rate of 18% and a CPM of $15.96.

The timing lever matters more here than in most categories. Grounds hiring is seasonal by nature — the BLS notes these workers may be busier or work longer hours in spring, summer and fall, and that some jobs are seasonal — so campaigns that launch in the month the crew is already needed compete with every other contractor in the market at once. Our landscaping recruiting page works through that curve. These figures are advertising cost only and buy an applicant, not a hire.

If you are hiring grounds crews rather than describing the job, the recruiting side — where outdoor workers actually are, when to launch, and what an applicant costs to reach — is on our landscaping and grounds recruiting page.

Writing the ad version

The template above is for your ATS and careers page. The advertisement that runs on Facebook or Instagram is much shorter and answers three questions in the first two lines: how much, what hours, where. Something like: "Groundskeeper — $20–$23/hr, year round, not seasonal. Mon–Fri 7am–3:30pm. [City]. We pay for your pesticide license. Apply in 60 seconds, no résumé."

Then two or three knockout questions on the form — license status, availability, distance — and nothing else. Every added field costs completions, and each screening question buys precision with volume. The mechanics are in our candidate conversion rate guide, and fifteen worked examples are in our help wanted ad examples library.

Job titles for landscaping work, and which one to put on the posting

Landscaping is one of the few frontline categories where the title on the posting and the title on the org chart are rarely the same, and where the wrong choice costs you applicants outright. Almost all of the hands-on work sits in one federal occupation, Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers (SOC 37-3011): median $18.82 an hour, $39,150 a year in May 2025, 952,640 jobs, 4.7% growth projected for 2025–35 and about 149,500 openings a year. The crew lead sits in a separate occupation, First-Line Supervisors of Landscaping, Lawn Service, and Groundskeeping Workers (SOC 37-1012), at $28.09 an hour, $58,430 a year across 130,760 jobs — a $9.27 step up for the person who runs the truck.

Job title	What the work is	Post under it when
Landscaper	Installation and maintenance, broadly	The most-searched general title; safe default for a contractor
Groundskeeper	Maintaining one property to standard	Campus, municipal, cemetery, HOA, property management
Lawn care technician	Mowing, edging, blowing, on a route	Route-based maintenance with a fixed daily list
Landscape laborer / crew member	Entry-level install and cleanup	No experience required and you will train
Landscape installer / hardscape installer	Plantings, beds, pavers, walls, drainage	Install-side work with equipment and materials
Irrigation technician	Sprinkler install, repair, winterization	A licensed or specialist skill set; pays above crew rate
Grounds maintenance worker	The BLS-family phrasing	Public-sector postings where classification language is required
Crew leader / foreman	Runs the truck, the crew and the day's list	SOC 37-1012 work — price it accordingly

Two rules make this decision easy. Put the phrase your candidate would type in the title, and the accurate scope in the first line of the summary: Landscaper (Lawn Care Technician) — Route Crew, [City], March–November. And never advertise a crew leader as a landscaper because the pay band is easier to justify internally; the people who can run a crew are scanning for “crew leader” and “foreman,” and they will not open a laborer posting.

One more title decision that is really a pay decision: if the work is seasonal, say the months. “March to November, with winter plow work available” is a better posting than “year-round opportunity” that turns out not to be, and it reaches the substantial pool of people who are specifically looking for seasonal outdoor work.

Golf course maintenance job description

Golf course maintenance is groundskeeping to a tighter standard, on a schedule set by the first tee time. BLS describes greenskeepers as maintaining golf courses, with work that is “similar overall to that of groundskeepers” but where “turf maintenance may be more complex,” and notes that they periodically relocate holes on putting greens and maintain canopies, benches and tee markers along the course. O*NET lists Greenskeeper as a reported title for landscaping and groundskeeping workers (37-3011), at the $18.82 hourly median above.

Golf course maintenance duties

Mow greens, tees, fairways and roughs with [walk-behind / riding reel mowers and rotary mowers] to the height and pattern set by the superintendent
Change cup locations and move tee markers on the daily setup schedule
Rake and edge bunkers, fill divots and repair ball marks
Hand water, check and adjust irrigation heads, and help with irrigation repairs
Help with aerification, topdressing, overseeding and sod work
Apply fertilizer and [pesticide, where licensed] under the direction of the spray technician
Blow debris, empty trash and keep course accessories in order
Report equipment problems and turf issues such as dry spots or disease to the crew lead

What to say in the posting

Lead with the start time and the season. Crews usually start before play so they can finish ahead of golfers, and candidates who cannot make a pre-dawn start should know before they apply. Say whether the job is seasonal or year-round, what the winter work is, and whether weekends are on rotation.

Pay needs attention. BLS reports a May 2025 median of $17.45 an hour for grounds maintenance workers in the amusement, gambling and recreation industries, the industry group that includes golf courses and employs 8% of the occupation, below the $21.39 in educational services and $20.90 in services to buildings and dwellings. A golf course competes with landscaping contractors for the same people, so state the rate and the things a contractor cannot offer: [golf privileges], [meals], [a fixed route on one property], [a path to assistant superintendent].

Spraying is the licensed part of the job. BLS says most states require licensing for workers who apply pesticides, and that large institutional employers such as golf courses may supplement on-the-job training with instruction in horticulture, insect and disease diagnosis and small-engine repair. If you will train a crew member toward a spray technician role at the $22.28 pesticide applicator median, say so; it is a better recruiting line than anything in the benefits list.

Title the posting for the role: “Golf Course Maintenance Crew Member”, “Greenskeeper”, “Spray Technician” or “Equipment Technician”. For the entry-level version of grounds work, see the landscape laborer job description; for interviewing, landscaper interview questions.

Frequently asked questions

What does a groundskeeper do?

Mowing, trimming and edging, planting and mulching beds, pruning shrubs and small trees, running and repairing irrigation, applying fertiliser and pesticide where licensed, seasonal leaf and storm clean-up, and in most regions snow removal. On campuses, cemeteries and sports facilities the role also covers turf care, line marking and event preparation.

How much do groundskeepers make?

The BLS median for grounds maintenance workers was $19.27 an hour, or $40,080 a year, in 2025. Within the group, May 2025 medians were $18.82 for landscaping and groundskeeping workers, $22.28 for pesticide handlers, sprayers and applicators and $24.50 for tree trimmers and pruners. Posting against the right one of those three matters as much as the number itself.

Does a groundskeeper need a license?

Not to do general grounds work — the BLS lists no formal educational credential for the occupation. Pesticide application is different: most states require licensing for workers who apply pesticides, and licensing for those handling fertilisers varies by state. Check your state's rules before writing the duty list, and consider paying for the license rather than requiring it.

What does a landscaper actually do?

Day to day, the same things as a groundskeeper: mowing, edging, planting and mulching beds, pruning shrubs and small trees, irrigation upkeep, and seasonal leaf, storm and snow work. “Landscaper” is simply the more common consumer-facing title for the job — on job boards and in BLS data it is the same occupation and the same pay band as groundskeeper, not a separate, higher-skilled role.

Is groundskeeping seasonal work?

Often, but not always. The BLS notes most grounds maintenance workers are full time, that they may be busier or work longer hours in spring, summer and fall, and that some jobs are seasonal. Whether your role is year-round or March-to-November is the first thing a candidate wants to know, so it belongs in the first two lines of the posting rather than in a conversation at interview.

What is the job title for landscaping work?

Most hands-on landscaping roles fall under one federal occupation, Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers (SOC 37-3011), but the searchable titles differ: landscaper for general install and maintenance, groundskeeper for maintaining a single property, lawn care technician for route mowing, landscape or hardscape installer for build work, irrigation technician for sprinkler work, and crew leader or foreman for the person running the truck — which is a separate occupation, SOC 37-1012.

What does a landscaping crew leader earn compared with a crew member?

BLS reports $28.09 an hour, or $58,430 a year, in May 2025 for First-Line Supervisors of Landscaping, Lawn Service, and Groundskeeping Workers, against $18.82 an hour, $39,150 a year, for Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers — a gap of $9.27 an hour. Advertising a crew leader role under a laborer title is the fastest way to get no qualified applicants for it.

Should a landscaping job posting say the work is seasonal?

Yes, with the months. “March to November, with winter plow work available” performs better than an implied year-round role that is not, because it reaches the sizeable pool of people specifically looking for seasonal outdoor work and it prevents the early quits that follow a surprise layoff in December.

What does a golf course maintenance worker do?

A golf course maintenance worker mows greens, tees and fairways, changes cup locations and moves tee markers, rakes bunkers, repairs divots and ball marks, checks irrigation, and helps with aerification and topdressing, usually starting before play each morning. BLS calls them greenskeepers and says their turf work may be more complex than general groundskeeping. The occupation's May 2025 median was $18.82 an hour.

Looking for tree work rather than grounds maintenance? The arborist and tree trimmer job description covers a separate trade paying a $24.50 median against $18.82 for landscaping and groundskeeping — which is also the strongest promotion you can offer a crew member you already employ.

Other job description templates

See all job description templates — free, editable templates for frontline, trades, healthcare and warehouse roles.

Hiring grounds crews?

The job description is the document; the ad is the thing that gets read. We write it, run it where outdoor workers are actually scrolling, and report what each applicant cost — cost per applicant, not cost per hire.

Book a Demo Landscaping recruiting

Pay, employment, outlook, specialty medians, licensing, seasonality and work-environment statements: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, Grounds Maintenance Workers (last modified August 27, 2026; 2025 wage and employment data, May 2025 medians by specialty), read August 28, 2026. Cost-per-applicant figures: Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark — skilled trades and field service sector, 335 campaign-months, advertising costs only; no grounds or landscaping role family is published. Cost per applicant is not cost per hire. Last updated August 2026.