Maryland Landscaping License: What Applies and What Does Not
What Maryland 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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Maryland landscaping licensing at a glance
| State credential required for this work? | Through contractor licensing |
| What it is called | Home Improvement Contractor License |
| Who issues it | Maryland Home Improvement Commission |
| Must the business itself be licensed? | Yes |
Does a landscaping business need a license in Maryland?
Maryland issues no license of its own for landscapers. Its contractor licensing reaches this work through the Home Improvement Contractor License.
Maryland issues no landscaping specific license, and ordinary landscaping on residential property is inside the Home Improvement Commission's scope: Business Regulation 8-101(g)(2)(i) names landscaping among the works on land adjacent to a dwelling that the definition of home improvement includes, and 8-301(a) requires a contractor license whenever a person acts as a contractor. No dollar floor exists anywhere in the title, and the exclusion list at 8-101(g)(3) is exhaustive and contains no small contract exclusion, so the licensing duty attaches at any contract value; routine lawn mowing sits outside the definition because it is not an addition, alteration, improvement or replacement, which is the ground for the maintenance exemption rather than a threshold. Work on commercial property and on apartment buildings of four or more units falls outside the title, and the Department of Natural Resources separately licenses tree experts under Natural Resources 5-419.
The landscaping business itself must be licensed or registered, not only the people doing the work.
This records what Maryland 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: Maryland Code, Business Regulation 8-101, Definitions. 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 Maryland it is made with the Maryland State Department of Assessments and Taxation. 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 Maryland covers the filing itself, step by step.
Insurance Maryland 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 Maryland 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.