What we found
21 landscaping websites, read one by one.
We studied the current site of every landscaping, lawn, garden and tree business we designed for between late September and 1 November 2026: 10 in the US, 7 in the UK, 3 in Australia and 1 in Canada. On 1 November 2026 we opened each homepage again as a phone would. It is a small group, so these numbers describe what we saw rather than the whole industry.
9 of 21sites showed stock or stock-looking photos in prominent placesFrom our review notes
9 of 14homepages had no quote form on the page itselfMeasured on a phone, 1 Nov 2026
4 of 14homepages had no phone number that dials when tappedMeasured on a phone, 1 Nov 2026
2.1 MBmedian homepage download on a phone; the heaviest tenth were over 19.7 MB14 homepages measured
The businesses themselves were in good shape: steady Google reviews, loyal repeat customers and, in many cases, crews who have looked after the same gardens for years. Their sites were spread over a surprising number of platforms. WordPress carried about half of them, usually with a page builder, and the rest ran on GoHighLevel, Hostinger, B12, Lovable, GoDaddy, Squarespace, Webflow or hand-written code. What they shared was a template look that could belong to any trade, with generic icon rows and a stock photo of someone else's lawn at the top.
Seven of the sites carried town or area pages, from six up to about seventy, written mainly for search engines. One design and build firm's site was still running on a template made for a painting contractor. One tree surgeon's site had stopped loading its styles and still held photos from another trade's template. Another arborist had a holding page that sent visitors to Facebook, where 23 good climbing and removal clips were waiting to be used.
Method: our review notes describe each old site in writing; we counted notes that mention stock or generated images and placeholder or demo content. Phone checks opened each homepage once at 390 pixels wide. See the full method.