Increasing Labor and Material Costs Impact Landscaping Services

Have you noticed an increase in food prices? Gas? Lumber? Plants? Household electronics?

The pandemic is not over yet, but supply-chain troubles mean supply isn’t meeting demand — sending prices even higher. These increasing costs are affecting many industries, including landscaping.

We strive to deliver quality materials and services to our customers through any challenge—and this year has been full of them: COVID, a winter storm, project delays, and labor shortages. As costs are increasing, so too must our service costs increase to maintain our level of excellence.

Here’s How Rising Costs Impact Our Services

We work diligently and efficiently to absorb costs, but when costs rise in many areas—fuel, labor, plants, and equipment—we must also increase our service prices. When challenges occur, we like to be transparent so our customers better understand how potential changes might affect their present and future projects. Due to increasing labor and material costs, there will be an 8-15% cost increase on services for the time being, depending on the project scope. Here’s a look at how rising costs impact our services:

Labor and Equipment Costs

Last month we talked about how a limited workforce made it challenging to meet the increasing demand for services. We are happy to announce for the first time this year, we are fully staffed. However, to overcome the challenges of a limited workforce, our labor costs rose 12.5% since January of this year. The same difficulties impact the plastic industry. As demand outpaces the supply, it causes prices to increase. The result is that the cost of our plastic irrigation parts (PVC, sprinklers, edging, etc.) and other operations equipment have increased 5-10%.

Plant and Fuel Costs

When we wrote about the increase in demand for plants and a limited supply, it impacts more than our timeline to complete a project—it affects the budget. Many plants in Texas nurseries were damaged during the winter storm, which requires we work with out-of-state nurseries to supply healthy plants. These nurseries often upcharge plants because they are in high demand and low supply. And not only are we dealing with increasing plant prices, but the increase in fuel and other logistics costs to deliver plants to our nursery requires us to evaluate the impact on our service pricing.

What We Recommend

As much as we would love to assure you that prices will decrease in the next couple of months, we have no way of knowing future costs. Every property is different and has different immediate needs, but we suggest waiting until next Spring for significant landscape renovations. Our team can defer large projects to keep your costs lower and instead focus on removing dead plants from the winter storm and making minor, aesthetic changes. We hope that more plants and other materials will be available in the next six months, and prices will decrease, but we cannot know for sure.

Our team can assess your property and discuss specific needs to help you choose projects to stay on budget and plan for future projects. We ask for understanding as our costs increase and we find creative solutions to counteract these frustrating obstacles. Contact us for more information about our services or to answer any of your questions about pricing.