Subcontractor Agreements For Landscaping Businesses

Yes, if you bring in subcontractors for landscaping work in New Zealand, you should have a written subcontractor agreement before they start on site.

The more nuanced part is making sure the agreement matches how the work actually runs. Landscaping jobs often involve changing weather, shared tools, client instructions, specialist trades, health and safety risks, and tight deadlines. A short handshake deal rarely covers all of that.

A good landscaping subcontractor agreement helps you stay flexible without losing control of quality, your client relationship, or your legal position. It also helps reduce the risk that a regular contractor starts looking more like an employee.

Do You Need A Landscaping Subcontractor Agreement?

Yes, you need one if another person or business is doing landscaping work for your business and you want the relationship to stay clear, commercial and manageable.

You might use a subcontractor for:

• Garden maintenance runs when your team is fully booked
• Soft landscaping, planting, mulching and lawn preparation
• Hard landscaping, paving, retaining features or drainage work
• Irrigation, lighting or other specialist services
• One-off labour on a large residential or commercial project
• Ongoing overflow work during spring and summer

Without a written agreement, you may still have a contract, but it can be hard to prove exactly what was agreed. That matters if the client complains, the subcontractor damages property, someone is injured, or the subcontractor invoices for work you didn't approve.

Say Maia runs a landscaping business in Hamilton. She wins a large job installing garden beds, turf and irrigation for a new build. She brings in a specialist irrigation contractor for three days, but they also speak directly with the client and offer to do extra planting on the side. Without clear terms, Maia may struggle to stop client poaching, recover costs for defective work, or explain who was responsible for the final outcome.

Your agreement doesn't need to be overcomplicated. It just needs to clearly explain who is doing what, how they get paid, what standards apply, and what happens if things go wrong.

What Should A Landscaping Subcontractor Agreement Cover?

A landscaping subcontractor agreement should cover the commercial deal, site access rules, quality standards, insurance, safety duties, confidentiality and restrictions on dealing directly with your clients.

At a minimum, think about including:

• Parties: The legal name, NZBN if relevant, and contact details for your business and the subcontractor.
• Scope of work: The landscaping services the subcontractor will provide, such as mowing, planting, paving, irrigation or garden maintenance.
• Job details: Site address, dates, access times, project stages and any client-specific requirements.
• Fees and payment: Hourly rates, day rates, fixed fees, GST treatment, invoicing process and payment timing.
• Materials: Who supplies or buys plants, soil, mulch, pavers, irrigation parts, fuel and other supplies.
• Tools and equipment: Who provides mowers, trailers, excavators, safety gear and specialist machinery.
• Standards: Required workmanship, clean-up obligations and compliance with your instructions.
• Defects: How mistakes are reported, fixed and paid for.
• Insurance: Public liability, vehicle, plant and equipment, and any professional cover if design or technical advice is involved.
• Health and safety: Site hazards, training, incident reporting and compliance with the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015.
• Client contact: Rules about speaking with your client, quoting extra work and protecting your customer relationships.
• Confidentiality: Protection for your pricing, designs, processes, client lists and job information.
• Ending the arrangement: When either side can end the agreement and what happens to unfinished work.

Templates can miss the messy parts of outdoor work, especially where sites change daily and subcontractors work beside your staff. Your document will work best when it's tailored to your services, your team structure and the kind of clients you take on.

How Do You Set The Job Scope For Outdoor Works?

You set the job scope by being specific about the tasks, site, standards, exclusions and approval process before work begins.

Landscaping work can easily drift beyond the original quote. A client asks for an extra garden bed. The subcontractor removes more soil than expected. Weather delays a turf install. A supplier delivers the wrong plants. If your subcontractor agreement is vague, those changes can turn into unpaid time or quality issues.

What To Include In The Scope

For each job or work order, include practical details such as:

• The site address and area of the property to be worked on
• Start and finish dates, or estimated stages if the timing depends on weather
• The exact tasks the subcontractor is responsible for
• Any drawings, plans, measurements or planting schedules they must follow
• Materials to be used, including approved substitutes
• What is excluded, such as rubbish removal, irrigation repairs or after-hours watering
• Clean-up expectations at the end of each day
• Who can approve variations or extra charges

For example, garden maintenance can mean very different things to different people. If you mean lawn mowing, edging, hedge trimming, weed spraying and removal of green waste, say that. If tree work over a certain height is excluded, say that too.

Why Variations Matter

Your agreement should say that the subcontractor can't agree to extra work with your client unless you approve it first. This protects your quote, your client relationship and your margin.

It also helps with Fair Trading Act 1986 risk. If your business has promised the client a particular outcome, time frame or standard, you need your subcontractor to follow the same promise. Misleading statements about what can be delivered, or who is responsible for extra costs, can create problems for your business.

Who Provides Tools, Materials And Insurance?

It depends on the arrangement, but your agreement should say clearly who provides each item and who is responsible if it's lost, damaged or unsuitable.

This is especially important in landscaping because tools and materials aren't minor details. A broken mower, unsafe trailer, wrong plant variety or damaged excavator attachment can delay the job and affect your client.

Your agreement should cover:

• Whether the subcontractor brings their own tools, vehicles and equipment
• Whether they can use your equipment, and on what conditions
• Who pays for fuel, maintenance, blades, repairs and consumables
• Who orders and checks plants, turf, soil, mulch, pavers and irrigation materials
• How materials are stored on site
• Who bears the cost if materials are wasted, damaged or stolen

From a contractor-versus-employee perspective, subcontractors who provide their own tools, vehicles and insurance are more likely to look like genuine independent businesses. That isn't the only factor, but it helps support the commercial nature of the relationship.

Insurance shouldn't be treated as a box-ticking exercise. Depending on the work, you may want your subcontractor to hold:

• Public liability insurance
• Motor vehicle and trailer insurance
• Plant and equipment cover
• Statutory liability cover
• Professional indemnity insurance, if they provide design, technical advice or specifications

Ask for proof of insurance before work starts and keep a copy. If your own insurer has requirements for subcontractors, build those into your agreement.

How Do You Manage Health And Safety On Site?

You manage health and safety by setting clear site rules, sharing hazard information, coordinating with other businesses on site and making incident reporting non-negotiable.

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, your business may be a PCBU, which means a person conducting a business or undertaking. Your subcontractor may also be a PCBU. More than one business can owe health and safety duties on the same site, and you need to work together where your duties overlap.

Landscaping can involve real risks, including:

• Excavation, trenching and underground services
• Power tools, mowers, chainsaws and compactors
• Chemicals, fertilisers and sprays
• Manual handling of soil, pavers, sleepers and plants
• Slips, trips and falls on uneven or wet ground
• Vehicle and trailer movement
• Working near driveways, footpaths, pets or the public
• Sun exposure, heat, cold and severe weather

Your subcontractor agreement should require the subcontractor to comply with your reasonable site rules, use suitable personal protective equipment, keep licences or tickets current where needed, and stop work if something is unsafe.

You should also have a simple process for:

• Site inductions
• Hazard reporting
• Safe use of chemicals and equipment
• Notifying you of incidents, injuries and near misses
• Managing subcontractor staff or helpers
• Keeping clients and the public away from work areas

If a subcontractor brings their own workers, your agreement should make them responsible for managing those workers safely and making sure they're trained. You'll still need to think about your own duties, especially if your team and their team are working side by side.

What Happens If The Landscaping Work Has Defects?

Your agreement should say that the subcontractor must fix defective or incomplete work, and it should explain when you can withhold payment or recover the cost of having someone else fix it.

Defects in landscaping can be hard to untangle because outdoor work is affected by weather, soil, watering, pests and client maintenance. That's why your agreement should separate workmanship issues from things outside the subcontractor's control.

Examples of defects may include:

• Pavers laid unevenly or without proper preparation
• Plants installed in the wrong location or at the wrong spacing
• Irrigation not connected or tested properly
• Turf laid on unsuitable or poorly prepared ground
• Damage to existing lawns, fences, pipes or garden beds
• Green waste or debris left on site contrary to the work order

Your agreement can require the subcontractor to return within a set period after you notify them of a defect. If they don't return, you may want the right to engage someone else and deduct reasonable rectification costs from amounts owed, if the wording and circumstances allow it.

You should also align your subcontractor terms with your client service agreement. If you promise your client that services will be carried out with reasonable care and skill, your subcontractor should owe you a matching obligation. If your client is a consumer, the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 may apply to your services. If your client is another business, you may be able to contract out of parts of the Act, but only where the law allows and it's fair and reasonable.

Photos help. Before and after photos, delivery dockets, site notes and sign-offs can make it much easier to work out what happened if there's a complaint later.

Is Your Landscaper Really A Contractor Or An Employee?

It depends on the real working relationship, not just the label in your agreement.

Calling someone a subcontractor doesn't automatically make them one. If they work regular hours under your close control, wear your uniform, use your tools, can't work for anyone else and are paid like staff, there's a risk they may be treated as an employee under the Employment Relations Act 2000.

That can have practical consequences. If someone is really an employee, you may need to deal with employment agreement requirements, minimum employment standards, PAYE, KiwiSaver, Holidays Act 2003 entitlements, leave, public holidays and employment processes.

The Employment Relations Amendment Act 2026 introduced a specified contractor gateway. In broad terms, a worker will be excluded from the definition of employee if the arrangement meets the gateway requirements, including a written agreement stating they're an independent contractor or not an employee, freedom to work for others, either no requirement to work or be available at specified times, days or minimum periods or a permitted right to subcontract with only limited vetting, protection from termination for refusing additional work beyond what was agreed, and a reasonable opportunity to seek independent advice before entering the arrangement.

If the gateway isn't met, the usual assessment of the real nature of the relationship can still matter. In practice, you should look at the whole arrangement.

Signs The Arrangement Looks More Like Contracting

• The subcontractor has their own business, NZBN or company registration with the Companies Office
• They invoice you for work and manage their own tax
• They can work for other clients, including other landscapers
• They can choose how to complete the work, subject to agreed outcomes and safety rules
• They provide their own tools, vehicle, equipment and insurance
• They can make a profit or loss from how they price and perform the job
• They can send suitably qualified workers or subcontract parts of the work, if you approve this

Signs The Arrangement Looks More Like Employment

• You require them to work set hours every week like your staff
• You provide all tools, uniform, vehicle and equipment
• They can't work for anyone else
• You supervise every task closely rather than setting outcomes
• They're integrated into your team roster and client communications
• They're paid a regular wage-like amount regardless of project outcomes
• They can't refuse work without risking the whole relationship

You don't need to lose all control to use subcontractors. You can still set safety rules, quality standards, client communication rules and deadlines. The key is to avoid treating an independent contractor exactly like an employee while calling them something else on paper.

If you're using the same person most weeks, it's worth getting tailored advice before the arrangement becomes your normal staffing model.

Key Takeaways

• A written landscaping subcontractor agreement helps you control scope, quality, payment, client contact and risk before anyone starts on site.
• Your agreement should be practical for outdoor work, including tools, materials, weather delays, variations, defects and clean-up obligations.
• Health and safety duties can sit with both you and your subcontractor, so site rules, hazard reporting and incident processes should be clear.
• Client poaching and side deals are easier to manage if your agreement has clear rules about client communication and future work.
• The contractor label isn't enough on its own. Your written terms and day-to-day setup need to fit the rules you're relying on, including the 2026 specified contractor gateway where it applies.
• Keep your subcontractor terms aligned with what you promise your own clients under your quotes, service terms and consumer law obligations.

If you'd like help with your landscaping subcontractor agreements, contractor-versus-employee settings, and health and safety clauses, you can reach us at 0800 002 184 or team@sprintlaw.co.nz for a free, no-obligations chat.