By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
Why does getting the award right feel like it should be enough?
Most gardeners who search for the right award are after a box to tick: find it, apply it, move on. That box matters, because paying the wrong wage under the wrong classification can create back pay and penalties. But a lawn and garden care business can have the award perfectly correct and still lose money on its busiest rounds, because the award itself says nothing about whether the price charged ever recovered that wage.
A gardener running a mowing round, a strata contract or a run of commercial grounds maintenance can tick every compliance box and still be working for less than the crew earns, because the classification only sets the floor on pay. It never checks whether the quote, the recurring maintenance contract or the one-off hedging job was priced to cover that floor once travel, tipping and a rain day are added in.
What happens when a mowing round is priced around the owner's own pace?
A round quoted on how fast the owner can mow, edge, use the whipper snipper and load the trailer often looks profitable on the page. Handed to a crew member paid at the correct rate, the same round can run longer, use more fuel and fall further behind on the route, because that crew member cannot move at the owner's own pace with the owner's own shortcuts.
Picture a gardener who built his maintenance contracts around his own habit of doing the tip run on the way home instead of mid-round, and trimming the hedging in the time it takes him personally, with a ute and trailer he knows backwards. The same recurring contract handed to a new crew member, paid under the award and needing a proper break between jobs, can quietly turn a full book of work into one that barely covers wages, super and the diesel.
Which award covers a gardener's mowing and maintenance crew?
If you run a gardener's mowing and maintenance crew, the Fair Work Ombudsman says the Gardening and Landscaping Award (MA000101) covers your staff doing mowing, edging, hedging, pruning, weeding, fertilising, mulching and general maintenance work, along with landscape and grounds work on private and public land. It covers general labourers, experienced plant and lawn maintenance employees, employees operating mowers, edgers and rotary hoes, and qualified horticulture tradespeople you might employ.
The award covers your business throughout Australia, to the exclusion of any other award, for employees in those classifications, and it also covers labour hire businesses that supply you gardening and landscaping staff on an on-hire basis. Not every gardener you employ necessarily fits under it: the Fair Work Ombudsman notes that a gardener employed outside the gardening and landscaping industry, for example by a hotel rather than a gardening business, is not covered by this award.
What about office staff, an arborist, or work on a nursery or turf farm?
If you also employ office or admin staff, a different award can apply to them. According to the Fair Work Ombudsman's guidance on checking which award applies, your mowing and maintenance crew can be covered by the Gardening and Landscaping Award while your administration staff sit under the Clerks Award, because both awards can apply to the one business at once.
If you or someone on your crew also works as an arborist, tree lopper or pruner, the Gardening and Landscaping Award still covers them as long as your business is in the gardening and landscaping industry. Work in a plant nursery, or on a flower, turf or tree farm, instead falls under the Nursery Award (MA000033), which the Fair Work Ombudsman confirms does not cover gardening and landscaping businesses, or under the Horticulture Award 2020 (MA000028) for other horticulture industry work. This is general information, not legal, tax or employment advice. Check your own situation with the body named here or a qualified adviser.
How do you price a maintenance contract to cover the correct wage?
You protect the margin on a mowing round or a strata contract by pricing it against what a crew member genuinely costs under the correct award classification, not against how fast you personally can mow, edge and load the trailer. That real cost includes travel along the route between jobs, the time lost on tip runs for green waste, and the rain days when a round can't run to plan.
That number only tells the truth when it comes from your own job and pay data, not memory of how the round used to run last season. A data first look at the round, the maintenance contract and the timesheet against it will often show the gap between what was quoted and what the work actually costs once the correct rate, travel and tipping time are counted properly. AI agents, software that carries out a task the way you would, using your own prices, wording and rules, can take on logging job time, travel and tipping against each round and each contract, so that gap shows up without the office spending hours chasing timesheets by hand. With AI agents handling that recording the same way every week, the time freed up goes back into servicing the crew and the customers on the route, not re-entering numbers that were already written down once.
Where can you check the current rules?
- Gardening and Landscaping Award (MA000101) summary: the Fair Work Ombudsman's plain language summary of who the award covers and examples of the roles included.
- Gardening and Landscaping Services Award 2020 full text: the full award text, including the coverage clause and classification structure.
- Not sure which award covers your business: Fair Work Ombudsman guidance on checking coverage for different staff, including office and admin roles.
- Award coverage for an arborist: Fair Work Ombudsman guidance on when an arborist, tree lopper or pruner sits under the Gardening and Landscaping Award.
- Nursery Award (MA000033) summary: confirms who the Nursery Award covers, and that it does not cover gardening and landscaping businesses.
- Horticulture Award 2020 full text: coverage clause for the horticulture industry.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching starts from your own job and pay data through the Trade Business Intelligence, not from the award clause on its own. For a gardener, that means looking at what each round, each maintenance contract and each piece of commercial grounds work actually costs once the correct rate, travel, tipping and rain days are counted in, and finding where the price stopped matching that cost. Greg Allan has seen that “one of the biggest mistakes we see people make is they price it around themselves doing it”, which is exactly where the gap between a compliant award and a profitable round begins. The how of fixing that gap is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member, for every member, and the Academy is for owners who are open minded, innovative and willing to share.
