Seven questions. Ask us them too.
Most lawn care is sold on a doorstep in four minutes. These are the questions that tell you what a company is actually offering — worth asking of anyone quoting your lawn, including us.
Seven questions, and what a good answer sounds like.
- 01
Are you licensed by the state, and what is the number?
Tennessee requires a company applying pesticides or fertiliser commercially to hold a charter from the Department of Agriculture, and the person treating your lawn to be certified. A legitimate company gives you the number without hesitating. Ask, then check it — the state keeps the register, and the two minutes it takes is the cheapest due diligence in this whole process.
- 02
Who actually shows up — your people or a subcontractor?
You want employees, trained by the company whose name is on the invoice, and ideally the same technician most visits. A tech who has seen your lawn four times notices the disease pressure starting in the back corner. A rotating subcontractor treats the address, not the lawn.
- 03
Is the price based on my measured turf, or my lot size?
Turf square footage — the grass only. Your driveway, house footprint, beds and pool deck are not being treated and should not be charged for. Anyone quoting off the parcel size or a flat neighbourhood rate is guessing, and the guess is rarely in your favour.
- 04
What is in each visit, and how many visits a year?
A specific list with timing: what gets applied, roughly when, and why that month. “Seven to eight visits” with no detail is not an answer. Middle Tennessee lawns need pre-emergent before soil warms in late winter, feeding matched to the grass type, disease pressure covered in summer humidity, and aeration in the right season.
- 05
What happens if it does not work?
Free re-service between visits, and a plain answer about how long a fix should take. Weeds die over days, not hours; a thin lawn thickens over a season. What you are testing is whether they will come back without charging you, and whether they will tell you when something is not their fault.
- 06
Am I locked in, and how do I cancel?
Ask for the cancellation terms in writing before you sign anything. Prepay discounts are fine. Auto-renewing annual contracts with a cancellation fee are a retention tool, not a service. A company confident in the work does not need to trap you into year two.
- 07
Do you know what grass I have — and will you say so out loud?
Fescue and bermuda are opposite calendars. Fescue is seeded in autumn and struggles in August heat; bermuda and zoysia spread on their own, go dormant in winter and are aerated in late spring. A company that cannot tell you which one is in your yard, on the spot, is going to treat it on the wrong schedule.
Six answers that should end the conversation.
A price that expires today
Door-knock pressure and “only if you sign now” discounts exist because the offer does not survive comparison. A real quote is still a real quote next week.
No licence number offered
Evasion here is the end of the conversation. Products applied to your lawn are regulated, and so is the person applying them.
Pre-emergent right before an autumn seeding
Pre-emergent stops seeds germinating. It cannot tell your grass seed from crabgrass. Any company that sprays it weeks before overseeding your fescue has just sold you two services that cancel each other out.
A quote with no square footage on it
If the number was not measured, it was estimated from the street. You will find out which when the lawn is under-treated.
Mowing and treatment sold as one thing
They are different trades with different licensing. Plenty of good companies do both, but the treatment side should still be licensed, scheduled and priced on its own terms.
Reviews that never mention a neighbourhood
Ask to see recent reviews from your side of town. Lawn care is hyper-local: clay, shade, water and disease pressure change street by street.
Six things a real quote has on it.
If two quotes contain all six, you can compare them honestly. If one is a single number in a text message, you are not comparing prices — you are guessing.
Three things that are true here and nowhere else on the checklist.
We sit on clay over limestone
Clay compacts hard, and compaction is physical: water runs off instead of soaking in. A plan for a Middle Tennessee lawn that never mentions aeration is missing the thing that makes everything else work.
Fescue does not repair itself
It has no runners, so whatever summer takes stays gone until new seed goes down — which is why autumn overseeding is not an upsell here, it is the maintenance. See the year, month by month
Summer here is humid, not just hot
Warm nights plus humidity is brown patch weather. Ask any company what their plan is for fungal disease in July, because a fescue lawn can lose half its density in a fortnight.
What people ask before they hire anyone.
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How much should lawn care cost in Nashville?
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Is it worth paying for lawn care instead of doing it myself?
Ask us the seven. We will answer on the spot.
We will measure your turf, tell you what grass you have, show you the square footage the price is built from, and put the cancellation terms in writing. If another company answers better, hire them — that is what the list is for.