Oregon Landscaping License: What Applies and What Does Not

Does a landscaping business need a license in Oregon?

Oregon issues the Landscape Contracting Business License and the Landscape Construction Professional License for landscapers.

Oregon licenses the company and the individual separately: state law requires a landscape contracting business license to bid or contract for landscaping work, and requires every individual doing the work to hold a landscape construction professional license. The Construction Contractors Board is a different agency and does not license this work as well, because the construction contractor law exempts a landscape contracting business that constructs fences, decks, arbors, patios, landscape edging, driveways, walkways or retaining walls within the scope of its Landscape Contractors Board license and meets the landscape contractor law's bonding requirement. The only value based exemptions in the landscape contractor law are narrow: a landscape maintenance business whose work for a maintenance customer is casual, minor or inconsequential and is worth no more than $500 a year at a job site, and a residential general contractor doing under $2,500 of landscaping per new dwelling.

The landscaping business itself must be licensed or registered, not only the people doing the work.

This records what Oregon 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.

Verified 2026-09-03 against the primary source listed under Sources.

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 Oregon it is made with the Oregon 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 Oregon covers the filing itself, step by step.

Insurance Oregon 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We do not publish Oregon premium figures for this trade, so nothing here is a quote.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.