Choosing a lawn care company isn't easy. Every spring homeowners are bombarded with postcards and mailers offering a wide variety of discounts. Complicating matters are the names of these companies which often use the words, "lawn", "green" or some other obvious connection to lawn care. Weighing the options between providers can be confusing. In an effort to provide homeowners with more information to make an informed decision on their lawn care needs, we'll take a look at several of the most popular Indianapolis-area lawn care companies.
TruGreen/Chemlawn
TruGreen Chemlawn began servicing lawn care customers in the spring of 1973. A national behemoth, TruGreen's corporate headquarters are located in Memphis, Tennessee. With hundreds of locations across the United States, TruGreen usually has multiple branches within each metropolitan city. In 1992, the company was acquired by ServiceMaster, a conglomerate that owns other popular national service companies such as Terminix, Merry Maids, Service Master Clean, and others. In late 2013 TruGreen was spun off from its parent company to operate independently. This was largely due to operational and financial complications.
Services offered: Lawn fertilization and weed control, tree & shrub fertilization, aeration. "Other" services listed on website but not specified.
Typical promotional offer: TruGreen is well known for their $29.95 application. On the surface this looks very appealing, but the fine print will specify that this offer is restricted to lawns under 5,000 and only with prepaying for a minimum number of applications.
Scotts Lawn Service
The Scotts Company is a supplier of consumer products for lawn and garden care, with a full range of products for professional horticulture as well. The company owns the industry's most recognized brands. In the U.S., the company's Scotts(R), Miracle-Gro(R) and Ortho(R) brands are market leading in their categories, as is the consumer Roundup(R) brand which is marketed in North America and most of Europe exclusively by Scotts and owned by Monsanto. The Company also owns and operates Scotts LawnService(R), a leading provider of professional lawn service which was established in 1998 after purchasing Emerald Greel Lawn Service in 1997. Scotts Lawn Service continued to make acquisitions to establish itself in new cities. It is not considered to be the largest national lawn care provider.
Services offered: Lawn fertilization and weed control, tree & shrub fertilization and lawn insect control.
Typical promotional offer: Scotts doesn't usually promote discounts or "price" based offers. Instead it typically provides pricing in terms of "monthly cost." This can be confusing because it spreads the cost of lawn care over 12 months even though the customer may only receive services for only a set period, like April to October.
Kapp's Green Lawn
Kapp's Green Lawn is a regional lawn care provider with offices in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Missouri. Little information is offered on their website other than they have been in business for "over 50 years." Services offered: Lawn fertilization and weed control, tree & shrub fertilization, lawn insect control, aeration and seeding. Typical promotional offer: Kapp's may have several offers available at one time. Their typical promotion is to provide a 50% discount for the first application. This generally requires prepayment for several applications, typically 6.
Lawn Pride
No lawn care company list would be complete without a summery of Lawn Pride, right? Lawn Pride was established in 1983 by Andrew Neher. At the time Andrew was working his way through Ball State University and taking care of neighboring lawns. Upon graduation he had developed a legitimate business and Lawn Pride has grown and evolved ever since. Today Lawn Pride is recognized as the largest locally owned lawn care company in the Indianapolis area. As a locally owned company we are able to better monitor the growing conditions throughout the year. As such we are able to modify our products and services to better service our customers. For instance, during times of drought we will use products better suited for dry lawns. It's this type of attention to detail that has earned a reputation as a quality-service provider. Lawn Pride also has dedicated customer service representatives assigned to each customer to handle all questions, concerns, services and pricing.
Services offered: Lawn fertilization and weed control, tree & shrub fertilization, grub control, lawn insect control, aeration and seeding, fungicide, root development.
Typical promotional offer: Lawn Pride prefers honest, easy to understand offers. We typically provide a specific dollar discount, which may vary year to year. In 2014 our discount was $50 off your purchase of 7 applications. We also may offer smaller discounts for individual services like aeration, grub control or fungicide, but these are subject to change.
If you have any questions about services, please give us a call or send us an email.