Florida Landscaping License: What Applies and What Does Not
What Florida 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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Florida landscaping licensing at a glance
| State credential required for this work? | Through contractor licensing |
| What it is called | Certified Irrigation Specialty Contractor |
| Who issues it | Construction Industry Licensing Board |
| Must the business itself be licensed? | Yes |
| Applies to work valued above | $2,500 a job |
Does a landscaping business need a license in Florida?
Florida issues no license of its own for landscapers. Its contractor licensing reaches this work through the Certified Irrigation Specialty Contractor on work valued above $2,500.
Florida issues no landscaping license: the contractor categories at Fla. Stat. 489.105(3)(a) through (o) name no landscaping or landscape contractor, and the Florida Certified Landscape Professional credential is a voluntary industry certification rather than a state license. What does reach a landscaping company is the certified irrigation specialty contractor category the board adopted at Fla. Admin. Code R. 61G4-15.100(1)(q), effective May 5, 2024 and amended August 28, 2024, which covers installing, maintaining, repairing, altering and extending irrigation systems and the excavation incidental to them, subject to the $2,500 casual and minor work exemption at Fla. Stat. 489.103(9). The earlier record treating this as county level licensing no longer holds, because Fla. Stat. 489.117(4)(a)1. bars a local government from requiring a license for a job scope that does not substantially correspond to a state contractor category, and a company contracting under Fla. Stat. 489.119 must be qualified in the name of the business organization.
The landscaping business itself must be licensed or registered, not only the people doing the work.
This records what Florida 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: Fla. Admin. Code R. 61G4-15.100, Certified Specialty Contractors (Construction Industry Licensing Board). 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 Florida it is made with the Florida 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 Florida covers the filing itself, step by step.
Insurance Florida 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 Florida 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.