Commercial Grounds Maintenance: What to Specify Before You Compare Quotes
Short answer: Nearly every dispute between an owners corporation and a grounds contractor traces back to a scope that said "maintain the gardens" and nothing else. Before you compare a single price, write down what is included, how often, what is excluded, and how you will know it was done. Quotes only become comparable once that document exists — and the cheapest quote against a vague scope is almost always the most expensive outcome.
Commercial grounds maintenance covers a wide range of Melbourne sites: apartment and townhouse owners corporations, retail strips and shopping centres, office parks, childcare and aged care, schools, industrial estates, medical centres and managed residential portfolios.
They share a common problem. The person paying is usually not the person looking at the garden every day, the standard is subjective, and the contract is often a single line in an email. This is a guide to fixing that — useful whether you are an owners corporation committee member, a property manager, a facilities manager or a business owner.
First: who is actually responsible?
For an owners corporation in Victoria, maintaining and repairing common property is a duty of the owners corporation, funded from owners corporation fees and administered by the committee or an appointed manager. Individual lot owners look after their own lots.
The complication is the boundary. Whether a ground-floor courtyard, a front garden strip or a nature strip is common property or part of a lot is determined by the plan of subdivision, and it is not always intuitive. Before scoping any contract, establish:
- Which areas are common property and therefore in scope.
- Which are private lots and must be excluded — sending a crew onto a lot owner's courtyard uninvited is a problem, not a favour.
- Who handles the nature strip. Council rules vary and some councils expect adjoining owners to maintain it.
- Whether any area is subject to a landscape plan condition from the original planning permit, which can specify planting that must be retained.
Mark it on a site plan. A marked-up plan attached to the contract removes more argument than any amount of contract wording.
What a proper scope covers
Use this as a checklist. Every line should be either included, excluded, or listed as quoted-on-request.
Routine, every visit
- Mowing of all turf areas, with clippings caught or mulched as specified.
- Edging along every path, kerb, driveway, car park and garden bed.
- Line trimming around poles, bins, signage, seating, meter boxes and fence lines.
- Weeding of garden beds, paving joints, gravel and expansion joints.
- Litter removal from landscaped areas before mowing — specify this explicitly, because a mower turns litter into a hundred pieces of litter.
- Blowing down all hard surfaces, including car park bays and entries.
- Removal of all green waste from site.
Scheduled, seasonal
- Hedge and shrub trimming — state how many times a year and roughly when.
- Mulch top-up, usually annually, with depth specified.
- Fertilising of turf and beds.
- Leaf clearance through autumn, at increased frequency where there are deciduous trees.
- Irrigation checks at the start of and during the warm season — a failed solenoid discovered in February has already cost a bed of plants.
- Seasonal colour replanting, if the site uses it.
- Turf renovation — aeration and top-dressing on worn areas.
Usually excluded, and priced separately
- Tree work above ground level, which needs an arborist and often a council permit.
- Storm damage and emergency clean up.
- Irrigation repairs beyond simple sprinkler heads.
- Pest and disease treatment.
- Garden redesign, new planting and hard landscaping.
- Pressure washing paths and car parks.
- Bulk rubbish removal beyond routine green waste — dumped mattresses and hard waste are a real and recurring line item on apartment sites.
Frequency, and the mistake of averaging it
The most common budgeting error is a flat frequency all year. Melbourne grass grows several times faster in October than in July, so twelve equal monthly visits means an overgrown site in spring and a contractor standing in a paddock in winter with nothing to do.
| Period | Typical frequency | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Sep–Nov | Weekly to fortnightly | Peak growth. This is when a site gets away and looks neglected fastest. |
| Dec–Feb | Fortnightly | Growth slows in dry heat; irrigation checks matter more than mowing. |
| Mar–May | Fortnightly + leaf clearing | Second growth flush, then heavy leaf drop on treed sites. |
| Jun–Aug | Monthly | Minimal mowing, but weeds keep growing and this is the right window for hedge and structural work. |
A contract with seasonal frequency, at a flat monthly fee averaged across the year, gives the site the attention it needs when it needs it while keeping the budget line predictable. That is usually the arrangement that works best for an owners corporation.
The risk items — the real reason this matters
On a commercial or common-property site, grounds maintenance is not only presentation. Several routine tasks are risk management, and they should be named in the scope so they are never treated as optional extras.
- Sightlines at driveways and crossings. A shrub that has grown over a driveway exit onto a footpath is a genuine hazard. Specify that sightlines are maintained on every visit.
- Path clearance. Vegetation encroaching on footpaths and shared walkways — a trip and obstruction issue, and a particular problem for anyone using a pram or a mobility aid.
- Overhanging branches at head height over paths and car parks.
- Slip hazards — moss and algae on shaded paths, wet leaf fall on stairs and ramps. Autumn leaf litter on an external stairway is one of the more predictable incidents on a residential site.
- Lighting and signage obstruction. Growth over a light fitting turns a lit path into a dark one, which is both a safety and a security issue.
- Fuel reduction on sites near bushland — long grass and accumulated litter cleared before summer. On the urban fringe this is not optional; see bushland block garden care.
- Drainage clearance — keeping grates, pits and surface drains free of leaves and mulch before a downpour, not after one.
If your current arrangement has no written scope, this list is the fastest way to improve it. Most of these take a contractor no extra time on a visit they are already making — but only if someone has said they are part of the job.
What to check before engaging anyone
- Public liability insurance. Ask for the certificate of currency and actually look at it — the amount, and the expiry date. Diarise the expiry.
- Workers compensation cover where the contractor has employees.
- ABN and business details that match the entity issuing invoices.
- Site-specific arrangements — induction requirements, key or fob access, gate codes, parking, and where they may and may not drive.
- Green waste disposal. Where does it go? Licensed facility, not a paddock.
- A named point of contact and a response time for reactive requests. "Someone will look at it" is not a service level.
- Reporting. How will the committee, who may never be on site during a visit, know the visit happened and what was done?
Reporting is what makes a contract manageable
This is the item most often left out and most often regretted. Committees turn over, managers change, and memory is not a record. A simple standing report — date attended, tasks completed, anything noticed that needs attention, and a few photographs — solves several problems at once:
- The committee can answer an owner's complaint with a fact rather than an impression.
- Emerging issues get raised early, while they are cheap.
- At budget time there is a real record to plan the next year against.
- Nobody has to relitigate whether the site was attended in the week somebody happened to be away.
Why the cheapest quote usually costs more
Against a vague scope, the cheapest quote wins by assuming the least. It is not dishonest — it is a rational response to a document that did not say what was required.
What follows is predictable. Edging turns out not to be included. Green waste removal is extra. Hedges were quoted once a year, not three times. Winter visits quietly stop. Twelve months later the site looks worse than it did, the committee is fielding complaints, and the difference between the cheap quote and the proper one has been spent several times over on reactive work.
An honest quote against a clear scope is comparable, defensible at an AGM, and far more likely to still be working in year three. Ask every bidder to price the same written scope, and where they exclude something, ask them to say so.
Budgeting across the owners corporation year
- Routine maintenance as a flat monthly figure — predictable and easy to present.
- An annual works allowance for mulching, major pruning and turf renovation, planned rather than reactive.
- A contingency for storm damage and dumped rubbish. Both will happen; only the timing is unknown.
- A longer-term line for renewal — irrigation, tired planting, worn turf. Landscapes have a life cycle, and a maintenance contract cannot indefinitely maintain a garden that has reached the end of its.
Presentation is also commercial. For retail and offices it affects how the tenancy shows; for residential owners corporations it affects sale prices and how quickly a property leases. Grounds are usually the first thing anyone sees and among the cheapest things on a site to keep right.
FAQ
Who maintains common property gardens?
The owners corporation, funded from OC fees and administered by the committee or manager. Lot owners maintain their own lots. The plan of subdivision decides where the boundary sits.
How often should commercial grounds be maintained?
Typically fortnightly September to April and monthly through winter, adjusted for how visible and how planted the site is. Put the frequency in the contract.
What should the contract include?
Inclusions and exclusions, seasonal frequency, a marked site plan, response times, insurance evidence, a named contact and an agreed reporting method.
What insurance is needed?
Public liability at minimum, with a current certificate of currency sighted, plus workers compensation where there are employees.
Can work happen outside business hours?
Often, and for retail and office sites it is usually better. Residential sites are limited by local noise restrictions on early starts.
How is it priced?
Usually a fixed monthly or per-visit rate against an agreed scope, with seasonal and one-off works quoted separately.
Commercial grounds maintenance for owners corporations, retail, offices and managed portfolios across Melbourne:
Melbourne CBD · Docklands · Southbank · Preston · Essendon · Craigieburn · Doncaster · and 110 more suburbs
Need a scope written, or a second quote against one you already have? Contact Garden MC or call 0448 215 297. See our commercial maintenance service.
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