A website for landscapers and garden designers

Landscaping is the most visual trade there is. Nobody hires a landscaper from a list of services; they hire one because they saw a patio, a driveway or a garden they wanted for themselves. That makes your website a portfolio with a phone number attached, and it makes timing matter more than in almost any other trade, because the enquiries arrive in a rush from March and dry up by autumn. This guide covers what a landscaper or garden designer's website needs, when to build it, and how to be found for "patio" or "driveway" plus your town rather than lost in a list of gardeners.

Landscaping is bought with the eyes

A customer looking for a plumber wants the leak fixed. A customer looking for a landscaper wants a feeling: the garden in the photo. Your website's job is to show enough finished gardens, driveways and patios in enough detail that the customer can picture theirs, then make it easy to ring you. Words matter less than in most trades, but the words that do matter (materials, process, timescales, what affects the price) should be there for the customer who is comparing quotes.

What customers search for

• landscaper Nottingham and landscape gardeners near me
• patio installers West Bridgford and Indian sandstone patio cost
• block paving driveway Beeston, resin driveway Arnold
• garden design Nottingham
• fencing contractors Hucknall
• turfing Long Eaton, artificial grass installers
• decking installers Mapperley

Almost all of these are a specific type of work plus a specific place. A single "landscaping services" page is a weak answer to every one of them.

The pages a landscaper website needs

Beyond the home and contact pages, give each type of work its own page with photos of that work on it. A hard and soft landscaper might choose from:

• Patios and paving
• Driveways: block paving, resin-bound and gravel
• Fencing and gates
• Turfing and lawn installation
• Artificial grass
• Decking, pergolas and garden structures
• Garden design and planning
• Planting, borders and raised beds
• Garden walls, steps and retaining walls
• Drainage, groundworks and levelling
• Garden maintenance and clearance
• Commercial grounds and landscaping

Each page should show several finished examples, explain the process from survey to completion, name the materials you use, say how long a typical job takes, and give a guide to what affects the price. The driveway page should mention drainage and the planning rules for front gardens; customers search for that and it marks you out as someone who knows the job.

Seasonality: build in winter for the spring rush

Enquiries for patios, turf and garden makeovers start as soon as the weather turns, typically late February or March, and peak through late spring. Google takes weeks to months to find, index and trust a new site, so a website launched in April is chasing a season that has already started. The time to build is November to January. Use the quiet months to push driveways, fencing and groundworks, which are less seasonal, and make sure the site is live and indexed before the first warm weekend. Tradesmen's Websites typically builds, reviews and launches within 7 days of receiving your information; the indexing that follows is on Google's timetable.

Before-and-after photos

• Same spot, same angle for the before and the after. Nothing sells a garden transformation better.
• Finished work in good light, ideally after it has settled in: planting a few weeks on, a patio when it is dry.
• Close-ups of the detail: pointing, edging, cuts around a drain, a straight fence line.
• Drone shots for larger gardens and driveways. They photograph beautifully and show the whole job.
• A caption for each: town, what it is, the materials, the size and roughly how long it took.
• No stock photography. On a landscaping website it is obvious and it suggests an empty portfolio.

Service-area pages for landscapers

"Patio installers West Bridgford" and "patio installers Beeston" are different searches with different competitors. A page for each type of work in each area you cover, with photos from that area and genuinely local detail (soil, typical garden sizes, the kind of housing), gives you a page that can compete for each one. Twelve services across twenty areas is up to 240 pages. Our guide to getting found on Google locally explains how those pages work and how to keep them useful; the live demo website shows the structure in use.

Trust signals for landscapers

• Manufacturer installer schemes for paving and driveway products, where you are an approved installer, and the guarantees they carry.
• Trade memberships such as the Association of Professional Landscapers, BALI or TrustMark, only where you currently hold them.
• Insurance: public liability, and employers' liability if you have staff.
• Waste carrier registration, so customers know the old patio is not ending up in a lay-by.
• Live Google reviews from your Google Business Profile, especially ones that mention tidiness and finishing on time.
• Guarantees on workmanship, stated clearly.
• Company details: trading name, company number if applicable, base town, years trading.

The tradesman website checklist covers everything else that belongs on each page.

What a landscaper website costs

DIY for a small monthly fee and many evenings, a freelancer for a one-off fee commonly in the hundreds to low thousands, an agency for considerably more, or a subscription. Tradesmen's Websites is £59 a month with a £0 setup fee, no long-term contract, and hosting, SSL and a .co.uk domain included if you need one. The tradesman website cost guide compares the routes, including the costs that are not on the quote.

Frequently asked questions

Next step

See how the structure looks on the live demo website, then enter the work you do and the areas you cover, see a preview of your own website, and pay £59 for your first month only if you are happy to go ahead. £0 setup fee, no long-term contract.