Landscaping is hard, physically demanding work that literally shapes the world around us and how it looks. Without workers willing to invest the time and effort to do this type of job, there would be lawns, parks, and campuses in disarray across the country. Fortunately, there are people who have made careers in planting, pruning, cleaning, and more, and their efforts help keep our neighborhoods and communities beautiful and pristine.
As experts in large-scale planting projects, our team here at K. van Bourgondien knows how challenging this work can be, thanks to the physical strain and sometimes harsh weather conditions that the workers struggle with. Because of this, we wanted to shed some light on this often unsung segment of the workforce by finding the cities across America that have the best working conditions for landscape workers, focusing on factors like pay, climate, demand, and more.
To conduct our full analysis, we pulled data on seven different factors, including cost of living and quality of life, factors related to landscaper pay and job availability, and weather and climate data. We’ve gathered this information for 50 of America’s largest cities. We then weighted each factor and compared the results in each city to every other locale in our rating, giving each city a final score on a scale of 0 to 100. For a full list of the factors, sources, and weights used to produce this analysis, see the end of this post.
Photo: Dutch lightbulbs
Our overall results show that the life of landscape workers on the west coast is good. Each of the four best cities in our ranking is in California. Higher salaries and predictable temperate climates boost the scores for these cities, although the cost of living pulls some of them down. Rounding out the top 5 is Seattle, a city that has scored high enough scores in terms of labor competition and the lack of extreme temperatures to overcome the low rainfall, one of the city’s hallmarks.
While many of the top 20 cities are in warmer parts of the country, Portland, Portland, Oregon and Boston, Massachusetts join Seattle as cities in parts of the country that regularly experience cooler temperatures that are in the top 20 land. Decent salaries and limited job competition are among the biggest factors pushing all three into the top 20.
Photo: Dutch lightbulbs
When we talk about salaries, we know that for many, pay is one of the most important factors in choosing a job or career. That’s why we wanted to focus our analysis here on that single factor and identify the 20 cities where landscape workers are best paid.
A number of cities that we’ve already highlighted top this list, including Seattle, Portland, and Boston. Similarly, California deserves a second reputation here: San Francisco jumps from third place overall to first place in terms of annual salary, displacing San Jose by less than $ 300.
It’s also worth noting that cold-weather cities appear much more frequently on this list, and it’s hard to argue against the idea that landscapers in places like Minneapolis, Hartford, and Milwaukee deserve a little extra when working in places with winter Working outdoors can be both long and hard.
Photo: Dutch lightbulbs
After all, we wanted to find out which cities have most people actively landscaping. We used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to find how many landscaping jobs there are per 1,000 workers in each city. While large numbers of landscapers are employed in some California cities, Florida has the most cities in the top 20 with four.
The Sunshine State not only has the highest number of cities in the top 20, one of them takes first place overall. That city is Orlando, home to 10.17 out of 1,000 landscaping jobs, the only city with a double-digit number. Orlando is one of the greatest travel destinations in the world thanks to major theme parks like Disney, Universal, and SeaWorld, all of which are located in the central Florida city. Given the size of these parks and the number of tourists from around the world flocking to Orlando, it’s no surprise that it takes a lot of hands to keep things looking great all over the city.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This article was submitted by Dutch Bulbs.
