No Obligation, Pre-Qualification
Business Loans for Landscape Contractors and Garden Centers
Fast Approvals Made Simple
Landscaping money moves on the calendar. Crews, mowers, mulch and a nursery’s spring plant order all get paid for in the months before anyone signs a contract, and then the whole year’s revenue arrives between March and October. We line up funding for maintenance crews, design and installation firms, and the garden centers and nurseries that sell to them. One application reaches our extensive network of funders.
Funding Landscape Crews, Design Firms and Garden Centers
- Buy the Spring Plant Order
- Replace a Mower or Chipper
- Hire Additional Crew
- Free Up Cash Flow
What Drains Cash in Landscaping and Garden Retail
The trade runs on equipment and crews, and both are expensive to hold through a slow winter. A zero-turn mower, a chipper and a dump trailer are five-figure purchases that sit idle for four months of the year. Experienced crew leaders are harder to replace than the machines, and in a market thick with landscapers a competitor will offer yours more money in February. Landscaping is also discretionary spending for a lot of homeowners, so a soft year in the wider economy shows up in your bookings before it shows up anywhere else. Funding is what lets a company keep its equipment and its people together across a season that pays unevenly.
Design and installation firms have the same problem in a heavier form. A single hardscape job can absorb a pallet of pavers, a truckload of base material and three weeks of labor before the client pays anything past the deposit. Garden centers carry it differently again, with a spring plant order placed in December against sales that will not arrive until April. The other trades working those same properties run on the same clock, and pool builders and service crews buy a season of chemicals and parts well before the first invoice goes out.
Matching Landscapers and Garden Centers With Funders
Sterling Street Financial sends your file to an extensive network of funders rather than to one desk. That matters in a seasonal trade, because plenty of underwriters treat a January with almost no deposits as a red flag. Funders who write for landscaping and garden retail expect it. We source offers from the ones whose programs match how your year is shaped, then put the amounts, costs and repayment schedules next to each other.
Business loans designed for landscaping businesses can be categorized as:
Funding a Season That Runs From Bulbs to Build-Outs
Here is how those products get used across an actual year, from the December plant order to the summer payroll.
Start with the winter buy. Your plant supplier prices spring bulbs and stock lowest in November, months before you can sell any of it, and the same is true of a bulk order of mulch or fertilizer. A Merchant Cash Advance carries that purchase with payments taken from your card sales, which means the deduction stays small while the crews are idle and grows once the spring work starts. A short-term Working Capital Loan does the same thing on a fixed schedule instead, so the discount you took in November is repaid out of the revenue it produces in May rather than out of the December bank balance.
Then there is payroll in the weeks before the invoices clear. Commercial accounts and property managers pay on their own terms, often thirty or sixty days out, while your crews are paid weekly. A Business Line of Credit is built for exactly that gap. You draw what the payroll run needs, pay interest only on the amount drawn, and the limit refreshes as the client payments land. Owners who clear the balance within a few months pay very little to use it.
Growth costs more up front than most owners plan for. Taking on larger installation contracts means buying more material at once, which is a Working Capital Loan or an Equipment Financing decision depending on whether the money goes into stock or into a machine. At that size the job starts to look like the one contractors carrying materials and payroll ahead of client payments are running, where the pallet of pavers is paid for weeks before the client signs anything off. Advertising sits in the same bucket. A spring direct-mail push into a new neighborhood has to be paid for in February and pays back over the summer, and funding the spend keeps it out of the account the crews depend on.
See what your business qualifies for.
One application, compared across our extensive network of funders. On average, funding is received within 2-4 business days.
Garden Center & Landscaping Funding Questions
It is funding shaped around a trade whose revenue arrives in a rush and then stops. The same funding covers a mower fleet, a pallet of sod, a nursery’s spring plant order, or the extra crew you hire for peak season and pay before the invoices clear.
Quality equipment and a skilled workforce are what the work runs on, and both cost money before the season starts. In markets crowded with landscapers, rival firms bid for the same experienced gardeners. Design firms have capital sunk into plants, hardscape materials, and installations that will not pay out for weeks.
Gravel, mulch, and sod, spring bulb and plant orders for the retail side, mowers and specialized tools, hiring extra workers for peak weeks, local advertising, and the hardscape materials a design project needs up front.
Equipment Financing for mowers, trailers, and trucks, Working Capital Loans to carry the off-season, a Business Line of Credit for seasonal payroll, and Accounts Receivable Factoring when commercial and property-management clients pay on their own schedule.
It follows the calendar. Working Capital covers the quiet months when the crews are idle but the payroll is not. Equipment Financing spreads a machinery purchase across the seasons it will actually be used in. A Business Line of Credit is cheapest when you clear the balance within a few months of the spring rush.
It lets you buy bulbs and materials when a supplier discounts them in winter, keep experienced gardeners on the books instead of losing them to a competitor, and take on a larger installation without waiting for the last client to settle.
Setting a payment against a July that will not repeat in January. Weather cancels work you already scheduled, and a rainy spring can move a month of revenue out of the year entirely. Size the repayment against a weak season, and be careful about taking a second advance while the first is still running, because the two deductions compound during exactly the months you can least afford them.
It changes by product and by funder. Most look at annual revenue, credit history, how long the company has been operating and what other debt it carries. The useful thing to know is that funders in our network expect landscaping revenue to bunch into two or three quarters. A near-empty January reads as the trade working normally, not as a business in trouble.
Yes. Every credit profile is considered, including owners carrying a prior bankruptcy or a tax lien. For a landscaping company the book of signed work and the deposit history usually count for more than the score, because they say more about whether the season will cover the payment. Raise a lien or a discharge on the application rather than leaving it for underwriting to find.
We ask what the reason was. Seasonal revenue gets declined most often by funders that never fund seasonal businesses at all, which is a matching problem rather than a verdict on your company. The same file goes out to other funders in our network, and where the block is something you can move, such as an open lien or a thin quarter, we will tell you which one it is.
One online application, plus recent bank statements and whatever financials you have. If the money is for a specific machine or a specific job, say which one. A sized request is easier to place than a round number. One submission reaches every funder in our network whose programs fit, and approved funds can be in your account in as little as 24 hours.
Steps to Secure Business Funding with Sterling Street Financial
Submit Your Online Application
Fill out the online form. It asks what your business does, what the money is for, and what your revenue looks like. Call, chat or email if a question comes up.
Talk to Our Experts
A funding specialist reads your file and calls you with what the funders in our network sent back — the amounts, the costs and the repayment schedules.
Get Funded!
Choose the offer you want. Approved funds reach your account in as little as 24 hours, and most requests fund within 2-4 business days.
A Few Minutes to Apply
Fill out our online form and get approved quickly.
Compare Options
Both secured and unsecured loans with no personal guarantee.
Customize Terms
Choose what best suits you and your company’s needs.
Get Funded
Funds in as little as 24 hours, directly to your account.
Take your business to new heights.
Tell us the amount you are after and what your business takes in each month, and we will point your application at the programs that fit. No application fees, no obligation, and no impact on your credit score.