Colorado Landscaping License: What Applies and What Does Not
What Colorado requires of a landscaping business in 2026, what the LLC has to file first, and where the license and the entity are two separate steps.
By Edmond Hui · Last updated: September 2026
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Colorado landscaping licensing at a glance
| State credential required for this work? | No statewide license |
Does a landscaping business need a license in Colorado?
Colorado issues no statewide license for a landscaping business. Local registrations and specialty permits can still apply.
Colorado issues no state landscaping or construction contractor license. Title 12 of the Colorado Revised Statutes enumerates every regulated profession and occupation, and its forty one articles cover landscape architects at article 130, electricians at article 115 and plumbers at article 155, with no article for landscapers, landscaping contractors or general contractors; the statute itself treats a building or landscape contractor as an unlicensed occupation when it reserves a seat on the landscape architects board for one. Construction contractor licensing is left to municipalities and counties, and a business applying pesticides commercially must hold a commercial applicator business license under C.R.S. 35-10-105.
A state that issues no license of its own is not a state with no rules. City and county business registrations, specialty endorsements and sales tax permits are set separately, and we do not track them page by page, so confirm those with Colorado and with the locality you work in.
This rests on the state's own enumeration of the occupations it licenses, which does not include this trade. The source below is the record's primary citation and may not be that enumeration itself.
This records what Colorado publishes, not a determination about your business. Scope, thresholds and local requirements are set by the issuing body, so confirm with them before you bid or file.
Source: Colorado Revised Statutes 2024, Title 12: Professions and Occupations (Office of Legislative Legal Services). Verified 2026-09-03.
What the LLC has to do first
Pesticide and herbicide application is licensed separately from landscaping itself in most states, and that license is usually the one a general landscaping business actually needs.
The entity filing is separate from anything the license requires. In Colorado it is made with the Colorado Secretary of State. File directly with the state here. The order matters wherever the license is issued to the company rather than to a person: the entity has to exist before an application can name it.
Forming an LLC as a landscaping business in Colorado covers the filing itself, step by step.
Insurance Colorado landscapers are asked to show
Landscaping work damages what it is next to: irrigation lines, fences, windows and parked cars. General liability is the cover for that, and commercial clients ask for the certificate before the first visit.
We do not publish Colorado premium figures for this trade, so nothing here is a quote. Our business insurance guide for landscapers covers what each policy does and does not pay for.
This guide is general information, not legal or tax advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. It reports what each state licensing board publishes for this trade, with the sources this page cites. It cannot tell you whether your own work needs a licence: that turns on the scope of the job, the value of the contract, and the city or county you work in, which commonly adds its own registration on top of the state's. Confirm your own position with the board named on this page and with your local building or business licensing office before you bid or start work.
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Edmond Hui · Founder, MyStateLLC
Edmond Hui is a software engineer and serial entrepreneur based in New York who has founded multiple online businesses across e-commerce, media, and information publishing. Before transitioning into tech, he spent years as a commercial real estate professional closing deals totaling over 100,000 square feet, giving him firsthand experience with business formation and entity structuring. He built MyStateLLC to provide the free, state-specific LLC guidance he wished existed when forming his own companies.