Colorado Springs sits roughly a thousand feet higher than Denver, and at around 6,000 feet the differences compound: a shorter growing season, more intense ultraviolet exposure, later spring frosts, and some of the highest hail frequency in the United States. Plant lists borrowed from Denver are close but not quite right, and lists from anywhere warmer are simply wrong. This page lists landscapers serving Colorado Springs.
What Colorado Springs landscapers handle
Xeriscape and water-wise design, the regional default given a semi-arid climate at altitude.
Irrigation design, repair and winterisation — systems must be blown out before hard freeze.
Maintenance across a genuinely compressed season.
Hail recovery and resilient planting, a recurring seasonal reality rather than an occasional event.
Hardscape — patios, retaining walls, fire pits — built for freeze-thaw and often for slope.
Licensing: local rather than statewide
Colorado issues no state-level landscape contractor licence. Landscape installation, irrigation, sod, planting and hardscape are unregulated at the state trade level and governed by local building departments. Most Front Range municipalities require local contractor registration, so ask what registration a contractor holds locally and verify it with the city.
The one mandatory state credential is the Commercial Pesticide Applicator licence from the Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) Pesticides Program. Anyone applying pesticides commercially — including routine lawn weed control — must hold it. Ask for the number.
Verify general liability and workers’ compensation directly, since state trade licensing doesn’t exist to lean on.
What’s specific to Colorado Springs
Altitude changes the arithmetic. At roughly 6,000 feet:
- UV intensity is markedly higher than at sea level. Plants stress faster, sunscald damages thin-barked young trees on winter afternoons, and south and west exposures are harsher than temperature alone suggests
- The growing season is short. Late spring frosts and early autumn freezes compress the planting window considerably
- Night-time cooling is dramatic. Large daily temperature swings stress plants not adapted to them
- Zone 5b–6a. Marginal plants that survive in Denver can fail here, and anything selected for Pueblo or the southern valleys is likely too tender
Ask any prospective landscaper what hardiness zone they design to. A specific answer for your elevation — the city spans real elevation change from the plains up toward the foothills — indicates someone paying attention.
Hail alley. Colorado Springs sits in the heart of the region with the highest hail frequency in the country. Severe hail arrives most summers, and it:
- Shreds broad-leafed plants to stems within minutes
- Strips and scars young trees, sometimes fatally
- Destroys shade structures and lightweight materials
Sensible responses: favour tougher, smaller-leafed and more flexible species in exposed positions; site vulnerable or expensive plantings where the building offers some shelter; and ask about material durability on anything built. A landscaper who has worked here through a few seasons will have firm opinions about which plants recover and which don’t.
Winter watering is essential. Winters here are dry, and long stretches pass with no snow cover. Trees, shrubs and recent plantings die of drought in February, with the damage often not visible until spring. Local practice is to water established trees and shrubs during warm winter spells when the air is above roughly 40°F and the ground isn’t frozen, applying water mid-day so it soaks in before dark.
Newly planted trees are the most vulnerable. Any landscaper installing trees in autumn should be telling you this without being asked.
Chinook winds. Downslope winds off the mountains arrive warm and extremely dry, sometimes in winter, and can desiccate evergreens badly — a phenomenon that catches newcomers because the damage appears after a warm spell rather than a cold one. Anti-desiccant treatment and correct siting both help.
Alkaline, often shallow and rocky soils. Front Range soils trend alkaline, and toward the foothills they get shallow and stony. Iron chlorosis is common in susceptible species; adapted plant selection beats indefinite treatment. Excavation frequently hits rock, so ask what happens when it does.
Fire exposure at the western edge. Properties against the foothills and forested slopes sit in real wildfire country. Defensible space works outward from the structure, with the immediate perimeter kept clearest of flammable material and progressively lighter treatment beyond. Species selection, spacing and breaking up fuel continuity all matter.
SB 24-005. Colorado’s Senate Bill 24-005 prohibits installing non-functional turf, artificial turf and invasive species on non-residential property for new development and some redevelopment from January 1, 2026, including common-interest community property. It excludes residential properties and existing development. If you’re on an HOA board planning new common-area landscaping, this governs what you can install.
Pricing expectations
Colorado Springs figures for 2026, from the City and Colorado Springs Utilities:
- Colorado Springs licenses tree work at city level, and the trigger is height. Anyone paid to cut, train, prune, shape or remove trees 15 feet or higher, including conifers, needs a City Tree Service Licence
- That licence costs the contractor $110 a year, with a $120 exam, $55 late renewal and $5 for a duplicate — and requires $1,000,000 commercial general liability plus $100,000 workers’ compensation cover. Ask to see it
- Work on a city street tree needs a City Forester’s Permit, which is free — required for record-keeping and liability. This covers the trees along the street, not the ones in your garden
- Watering is limited to any three days a week of your choosing, and from 1 May to 15 October sprinklers cannot run between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.
- Newly built homes can earn $1 per square foot for installing a resilient landscape under the Utilities new-home programme — new construction only; renovations to existing yards do not qualify
- Winterisation from a local franchise starts at $95 for up to six zones, plus about $10 per additional zone
The tree licence is the most useful check on this page, because it is city-issued, cheap to verify, and carries real insurance behind it. Colorado Springs draws the line at tree height rather than at contract value: anyone paid to work on a tree fifteen feet or taller — and conifers are explicitly included, which in this city means most of them — has to hold a Tree Service Licence. The licence obliges them to carry a million dollars of general liability and $100,000 of workers’ compensation. A tree crew without one is both unlicensed and, in all likelihood, uninsured for the thing most likely to go wrong. The cost to them is $110 a year, so there is no defensible reason not to hold it.
The watering rule is more generous than most western cities and worth reading precisely: three days a week of your own choosing rather than assigned days, but with a hard mid-day exclusion from May through mid-October. That flexibility is useful when designing a schedule around a controller.
On money, be careful which programme is being described to you. The $1 per square foot incentive is for new construction only — the Utilities document is explicit that all landscaping must be new and that renovations to existing yards do not qualify. And the turf-to-native rebate that appears in searches is a commercial programme, restricted to non-residential water customers, capped at $20,000 per customer and requiring an irrigation audit before approval. Neither is a rebate for re-landscaping an existing house, and this page does not present them as one. Both documents also carry older revision dates, so confirm current terms with Utilities before planning around either.
One physical constraint runs through every hardscape quote here: expansive clay soils, which is what governs base preparation on patios and walls. No local contractor publishing a paver price survived verification — the most detailed local price page contradicted itself between a monthly and a per-visit figure — so ask three companies what depth of base they are building and why.
These are ranges local landscaping companies publish for this metro rather than survey data, so treat them as a bracket to check a quote against, not a price list.
Two contract items: the contractor’s City Tree Service Licence number before any tree over 15 feet is touched, and the base preparation depth on hardscape, given expansive clay soils.
Neighborhoods served
Landscapers listed here work across Colorado Springs, including the Old North End, Broadmoor, Briargate, Rockrimmon, Patty Jewett, Skyway, Cheyenne Cañon, Stetson Hills, Wolf Ranch and Downtown.
Most also serve surrounding communities — Manitou Springs, Monument, Fountain, Falcon, Woodland Park, Security-Widefield and Black Forest.
How this directory helps
Every landscaper here is listed with business name, address and phone so you can verify them yourself.
Three questions sort contractors here. Ask what local registration they hold and verify it. Ask for the CDA pesticide applicator licence if anyone will spray. And ask which plants they’d choose for an exposed spot given hail — anyone who has worked a few summers here answers immediately.