Georgia · Landscaping licensing · official-source guide
Georgia issues no statewide landscaping contractor license. The Georgia Department of Agriculture licenses the part that is regulated: any company applying pesticides to another person's property for a fee needs a pesticide contractor license plus a full-time certified commercial applicator. Land-disturbing work adds Soil and Water Conservation Commission certification, and irrigation backflow testing adds an Environmental Protection Division certification.
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Verify a licenseVerified against agency sources on 2026-10-12. Rules and fees change; confirm with the named authority before relying on this guide.
Georgia runs no single statewide license for a landscaping or hardscaping contractor. The work is split across three state programs and then a county or city permit on top. The Georgia Department of Agriculture names Landscape Contractor as an example of a business that must hold a pesticide contractor license before it applies any pesticide to someone else's property for a fee. The Georgia Soil and Water Conservation Commission certifies anyone involved in land development, design, review, permitting, construction, monitoring, inspection, or any land-disturbing activity in the state. The Environmental Protection Division writes the drinking water rules that decide who may test the backflow assembly on an irrigation tie-in. Landscape architecture is a separate licensed profession, and the Commission accepts professional licensure in landscape architecture as proof that someone qualifies as a design professional. None of those three programs licenses the act of grading a yard, laying sod, setting pavers, or building a seat wall. That is why two Georgia landscaping companies can sell the same services and carry completely different paperwork. A crew that mows and plants carries the least. A company that sprays turf, disturbs an acre of ground, and connects irrigation to a public water main needs credentials from three separate agencies. The land disturbance permit itself comes from a Local Issuing Authority, meaning the county or municipality the Commission has certified to issue permits. Build your credential list from the services you actually sell.
Sourcesagr.georgia.gov 1gaswcc.georgia.gov 2gaswcc.georgia.gov 3gaswcc.georgia.gov 4
The Georgia Pesticide Use and Application Act of 1976 requires any person engaged in the business of applying pesticides to the lands of another in Georgia to first be issued a pesticide contractor's license by the Commissioner of Agriculture. The Department reads pesticide broadly. The term covers any substance intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating a pest, and the Department lists herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, plant growth regulators, and defoliants inside that definition. Pre-emergent on a client's lawn is a pesticide application. So is a glyphosate pass along a bed line. The trigger is money. If your company applies any type of pesticide to someone else's property and a fee is assessed, or you perform the application as part of a maintenance contract, you are subject to the requirement. The Department's own list of examples includes a Lawn Care and Maintenance Company, a Landscape Contractor, a Tree Surgeon, a Right-of-Way Contractor, and a Mosquito Control Contractor. Two licenses are involved, not one. The company holds the pesticide contractor license. A person holds the commercial applicator license. To qualify for the contractor license you must employ at least one full-time certified commercial applicator licensed in the categories your company operates in, satisfy the financial responsibility requirement, and complete an application that you renew every year. General use products do not get you out of it. The Department states that providing applications of any pesticide, general use or restricted use, to another person's property for a fee requires both licenses.
Your commercial applicator license is not general. It is issued by category, and the category decides what you may legally treat. Category 24, Ornamental and Turf Pest Control, covers commercial applicators using or supervising the use of restricted use pesticides, or state restricted pesticide uses, to control pests in the maintenance and production of ornamental trees, shrubs, flowers, and turf. That is the core category for a landscape maintenance company. Several neighbors matter if you sell more than mowing and bed care. Category 27 is Right-of-Way Pest Control, which covers maintenance of public roads, electric power lines, pipelines, and railway rights of way. Category 23 is Forest Pest Control. Category 26 is Aquatic Pest Control, which covers pesticides purposefully applied to standing or running water, so a pond on a commercial property falls there rather than in Category 24. Category 41 is Mosquito Control. Category 21 is Agricultural Plant Pest Control. The company side mirrors the person side. The pesticide contractor license application tells you to check only the categories in which you actually operate and in which you have, in full time employment, at least one certified commercial applicator. If you add mosquito service in March, somebody on payroll has to hold Category 41 before you sell it, and the contractor license has to carry that category too. The Department points applicators to its own rule on categories for certified applicators to settle which one a given job falls under.
Georgia does not let the Department of Agriculture test you. The commercial applicator examination is provided by the Georgia technical colleges, administered by computer at several locations around the state many times a year, and scheduled through the state's pesticide exam site. The exam fee charged by the technical colleges is 45 dollars, and that fee is charged each time you sit, not once per candidate. Study materials come from the University of Georgia and are ordered separately. You must pass two things, not one. Every commercial applicator candidate takes the general standards examination, which tests general knowledge on pesticide use, plus at least one major category examination, which is specific to the type of application you intend to make. The passing score is 70 percent on each. Failure has a built-in cooling off period. If you do not pass the computer exam the first time, you must wait until the following month to retest, and you may not take any particular exam more than twice in any six month period. That makes a failed Category 24 attempt in January a February problem at the earliest, which matters if you planned to start pre-emergent rounds in spring. Passing scores for the general standards and category exams are held by the Pesticide Program for one year from the date of the exam. Once scores reach the Department and your documents and fees are in, the license is mailed within about two weeks.
Sourcesagr.georgia.gov
The two pesticide credentials run on different clocks, and mixing them up is how companies end up spraying on an expired license. The pesticide contractor license is annual. Licenses are issued for one year intervals, and every current license expires at the end of the calendar year in which it was issued, so renewal season is December for everybody regardless of when you first applied. The fee for a new application or a renewal is 55 dollars. Late renewal is penalized at 50 percent of the original fee, added on top. Payment is made online through the state's registration system as part of the license process, and the license certificate is mailed within one to seven business days after the fee is paid. The commercial applicator license is a five year credential. The fee is 90 dollars. A private applicator license, which is the credential for using restricted use pesticides in producing an agricultural commodity on your own or your employer's property, carries no fee. Out of state applicants have one extra step. If you are not located in Georgia, the Department asks for a notarized Consent to Service of Process form before the license is issued. Everyone also submits secure and verifiable documents proving citizenship or legal residency, and the Department will not issue the license until that paperwork clears. Keep your mailing address, email, and phone current with the Department, because a bad contact record is listed as a direct cause of licensing delay.
A commercial applicator license does not renew on paperwork alone. You must be recertified to renew it, and Georgia gives you two ways to get there. You can sit the commercial applicator exam again, or you can accumulate approved recertification credit hours during your five year license period. There is no exam for the credit hour route. The hour count is set per category, not per person. Commercial applicators must obtain either six or ten recertification credit hours per licensed category. For a landscape maintenance company the number that matters is Category 24, Ornamental and Turf, which requires ten hours. Category 41 Mosquito Control also requires ten. Category 31 Public Health requires ten, and Category 21 Plant Agriculture requires ten. The six hour categories include Category 23 Forestry, Category 26 Aquatic, and Category 27 Right-of-Way. A private applicator needs three hours. Hold two categories and you owe the hours for each of them. All recertification credit hours must be received inside the license period, and once you have the required credit for a category, further credit in that category is not recorded. Courses come from the Department's approved list, which includes both classroom providers and approved online recertification trainers. The Department publishes a searchable list of upcoming approved recertification courses by category. It also publishes a cheating policy and states there are strong consequences for anyone found cheating on an exam.
Georgia will give credit for an out of state applicator credential, but only partially and only on its own terms. The Department of Agriculture states that if you are licensed in another state with substantially the same standards as Georgia, all or part of the examination requirements may be waived. The route is a Reciprocal License Application, which is a downloadable form you complete and mail to the Department rather than an online filing. The fee for that application is 90 dollars. Two things do not transfer. The first is the company credential. The pesticide contractor license is a Georgia business license, and an out of state contractor license from another state does not substitute for it, so a company crossing a state line to work in Georgia still applies for the Georgia contractor license and still has to employ a full time certified commercial applicator in the right categories. The second is the backflow credential, which runs on a separate and narrower rule described further down this page. Out of state applicants also sign a notarized Consent to Service of Process form, because the Department needs a way to serve process on a company with no Georgia address. If your home state credential is in a category Georgia splits differently, expect to sit the Georgia category exam for the work you actually intend to do. The Department decides what counts as substantially the same standards, so confirm the waiver in writing before you book Georgia work.
The Department of Agriculture publishes the penalty in plain terms, and it is structured to hurt a high volume lawn care route more than a one time offender. If your company is engaged in the application of pesticides to the property of another person and is collecting a fee for that service without the proper license, an injunction may be sought against your company. A maximum fine of 1,000 dollars per violation may also be levied. The multiplier is the part that matters. The Department states that each pesticide application performed without the required pesticide contractor license may be viewed as a separate violation, with fines assessed accordingly. A route with dozens of monthly stops is not one violation. It is potentially one violation per stop per visit. Losing the license is the quieter risk. The contractor license application is itself the certificate of liability insurance, and by signing it you certify that the company maintains financial responsibility at all times through the license period in the minimum amount set by the Georgia Pesticide Use and Application Act and its rules. The Department states that failure to maintain financial responsibility will result in cancellation of the pesticide contractor license and may result in enforcement action. Competitors can start the process against you. The Department publishes a Reporting Unlicensed Contractor and Commercial Applicator form and asks the public to use it, and an injunction is public record once filed.
This is the credential most Georgia landscape and hardscape contractors learn about late. Anyone involved in land development, design, review, permitting, construction, monitoring, inspection, or any land-disturbing activity in Georgia must meet education requirements and be certified by the Georgia Soil and Water Conservation Commission under a program developed with the Environmental Protection Division and a Stakeholder Advisory Board. For a contractor doing the work, the credential is Level IA, and the Commission calls a Level IA holder certified personnel. The Level IA Fundamentals Seminar is aimed at builders, contractors, developers, site superintendents, grading and utility contractors, and monitoring consultants, and it covers best management practice installation, maintenance and inspection, the Georgia Erosion and Sedimentation Act, NPDES permits, field maintenance, stream buffers, and vegetative and structural practices. To certify you register for and attend a Commission approved and posted Fundamentals Seminar, submit the certification application, and score at least 70 percent on the Level IA certification exam. There is an exam only path if you already have the training. You register for a Commission exam only session and provide proof of attendance from an approved qualified personnel workshop or equivalent Commission approved course taken within three years before the exam date, then submit the application and pass the same exam at 70 percent. Proof of attendance has to carry the course date and the instructor's name. Certification also requires a sworn affidavit of lawful presence and a secure and verifiable document.
Georgia has a second, lighter erosion credential, and the Commission's own attendee list names landscaping and irrigation directly. The Subcontractor Awareness Seminar is required for individuals involved in land-disturbing activities working in a subcontractor capacity under a primary, secondary, or tertiary permittee. The published attendee list includes irrigation system personnel for residential, commercial, and industrial sites, landscape personnel, grading personnel and earthmoving equipment operators, best management practice installation personnel, utility personnel, wastewater personnel, well drilling personnel including directional boring operators, and plumbers and electricians when they conduct a land-disturbing activity inside a permitted project site. The seminar covers erosion and sedimentation, the environmental impact, vegetative and structural best management practices, and the laws governing erosion and sedimentation. Know the ceiling before you rely on it. The Commission states that a subcontractor certification does not qualify an individual to perform the duties of a qualified or certified person, and that Level IA certification is required for anyone performing those duties. So the card gets your installer legally onto a permitted site as a subcontractor. It does not let that person be the certified personnel of record for the project. If you already hold Level IA and are working as a subcontractor, you are not required to take the Subcontractor Awareness Seminar at all. If you attended a Level IA course but never certified, you still file a Subcontractor Awareness application with a proof of attendance form to receive the subcontractor card. Bring a government issued photo ID to the instructor.
Sourcesgaswcc.georgia.gov
The renewal rule is short and the enforcement language is blunt. A certified individual is required to attend and participate in at least four hours of approved continuing education courses every three years, a requirement the Commission attributes to the Georgia Erosion and Sedimentation Act. There is no examination for recertification. You may take a four hour Commission course or combine third party approved courses totaling four hours of instruction, and approved courses from both sources are posted on the Commission's site. You can start taking continuing education one year before your certification expires, and courses taken earlier than that one year mark will not be accepted. Since a policy change effective July 1, 2013, you only sit an initial certification course and pass the certification exam once. The Commission will renew a certification even if the initial certification has already expired, once the individual has attended at least four hours of continuing education. That sounds forgiving, and for your card it is. It is not forgiving for the job. The Commission states that the policy change pertains only to certification status, and that an individual conducting a land-disturbing activity with an expired certification is in noncompliance with the Georgia Erosion and Sedimentation Act and may be subject to enforcement action. So an expired card is not a paperwork problem you fix next month while the crew keeps grading. Lawful presence documentation is a one time filing for United States citizens and legal permanent residents.
Sourcesgaswcc.georgia.gov
Georgia treats landscape architecture as a licensed profession distinct from landscape contracting, and the clearest state confirmation a contractor will run into sits inside the erosion program. To take the Level II Introduction to Design course as a design professional, the Soil and Water Conservation Commission requires proof of professional licensure in engineering, architecture, landscape architecture, forestry, geology, or land surveying, or a CPESC credential. Level II is a two day course for plan reviewers and design professionals covering the design and review of Erosion, Sedimentation and Pollution Control Plans, and certification requires attending an approved posted seminar, submitting the application, and scoring at least 70 percent on the Level II exam. Plan reviewers take a different door, needing at least six months of work experience in erosion and sediment control or a Level IB certification in place of that experience. The practical line for a landscaping company is this. Installing is one activity. Sealing the plan that the Local Issuing Authority reviews is another, and Georgia gates it behind a design professional license that a landscape contractor credential does not provide. If you sell design and build on sites that need an approved plan, either the licensed design professional is on your payroll or you subcontract one, and the certified personnel running the installation still needs Level IA. Do not advertise yourself as a landscape architect unless the state has licensed you as one.
Tie an irrigation system into a public water main in Georgia and you walk into the drinking water rules. The Environmental Protection Division states that Georgia requires all community drinking water systems with at least 10,000 connections to have a cross-connection control program, and that smaller systems may be required to have one too. Under the Georgia Rules for Drinking Water, a supplier must require that all backflow prevention assemblies installed under that section be field tested following installation, repair, or relocation, and at least annually afterward. Testing is restricted work. Since October 1, 2004 all required field testing must be performed by persons certified by the Georgia statewide program approved by the Division, or by the American Backflow Prevention Association, the American Society of Sanitary Engineering, or the University of Florida TREEO Center. Because the credential is not in the Safe Drinking Water Act, no professional licensing board administers it. The Division contracted the Georgia Association of Water Professionals to run the Georgia Backflow Prevention Assembly Tester program using exams from the Association of Boards of Certification. Requirements are a high school diploma, GED or equivalent, at least six months of experience in plumbing or drinking water distribution with a verifier, and a 32 hour approved certification class with a hands-on proctored exam on reduced pressure principle, double check valve, and pressure vacuum breaker assemblies. The written exam is 100 questions with a 70 percent minimum, and a failed attempt means a 30 day wait. Certification lasts three years and needs six approved contact hours. Miss the date and a 90 day grace period applies with a late fee, during which you must stop testing. After that the certification is revoked and the exam must be retaken. Each water system keeps its own approved tester list.
Georgia pushes erosion permitting down to the county or municipality, which the Commission certifies as a Local Issuing Authority and which adopts an ordinance based on the Commission's model. The model tells you where the line sits. A project involving less than one acre of disturbed area is exempt, but the exemption does not apply if the activity sits inside a larger common plan of development or sale with a planned disturbance of one acre or more, or if it is within 200 feet of the bank of any state waters. Single family residence construction disturbing less than one acre is treated separately and still has to meet the statutory minimum requirements. Money follows the acre. Local permit fees are capped, and the model states the fees shall not exceed 80 dollars per acre of land-disturbing activity, calculated and paid by the primary permittee for each acre in the planned development or phase, with all applicable fees paid before the permit is issued. A Local Issuing Authority may also require security, which may be a bond, cash, or an irrevocable letter of credit, up to but not exceeding 3,000 dollars per acre or fraction of the proposed activity, and may call that bond to hire another contractor to stabilize the site. Buffers are not negotiable at the crew level. A 25 foot buffer is established along the banks of all state waters, measured from where vegetation has been wrested by normal stream flow, and trout waters carry at least 50 horizontal feet. Penalties reach 2,500 dollars per day, and each day of continued violation is a separate violation.
Georgia sets the watering window by statute, not by utility preference, so an irrigation contractor can quote it the same way across most of the state. Under the Georgia Water Stewardship Act, effective statewide on June 2, 2010, daily outdoor watering for planting, growing, managing, or maintaining ground cover, trees, shrubs, or other plants is allowed only between the hours of 4 p.m. and 10 a.m. for anyone whose water comes from a system permitted by the Environmental Protection Division. That is the default controller program on a new install. The exemptions are what let you finish a job. Allowed daily at any time of day, for anyone, are irrigation of new and replanted plant, seed, or turf in landscapes, golf courses, or sports turf fields during installation and for 30 days immediately following the installation date, drip irrigation or irrigation using soaker hoses, hand watering with a hose with automatic cutoff or a handheld container, irrigation of personal food gardens, irrigation of horticultural crops held for sale, resale, or installation, hydroseeding, and the installation, maintenance, or calibration of irrigation systems. Capture and reuse of storm water or condensate, reclaimed waste water from a permitted system, gray water reuse, and water from a private well on the owner's own property are also allowed any time. Drought changes the picture. The Division's Director declared a statewide Drought Response Level 1 on April 27, 2026 and maintained it in August 2026. Level 1 requires public information campaigns and leaves the 4 p.m. to 10 a.m. window intact, but higher levels under the Drought Management Rules restrict outdoor use.
Two more things catch Georgia landscaping companies. The first is the Live Plant license. The Department of Agriculture requires one if you are a Live Plant Dealer, and its own list of dealers names landscapers alongside garden centers, florist re-wholesalers, agents, and brokers. Growers need one if production space exceeds 1,000 square feet, or they ship plants out of state, bring plants in from out of state for resale, or collect wild plants to sell. The license runs January 1 to December 31, the fee depends on company type and the plants sold, and renewing after February 2 adds a 50 dollar late fee. The second is the structural pest boundary. The Georgia Structural Pest Control Act creates company licenses, certified operators, and registered employees across fumigation, household pest control, wood-destroying organism control, and honey bee removal, and those cards expire June 30 of odd numbered years. A pesticide contractor license in Category 24 does not let you advertise termite or household pest work. Verification is public and free. The Department of Agriculture runs a license search, with separate lookups for commercial and private applicators, for structural pest companies, operators and employees, and for every other license it issues. A customer can confirm your company and your applicator in a minute, which also means a prospect can confirm that a cheaper bidder is not licensed. Georgia publishes no statewide rule, sourced here, that forces a license number into your ads, so make the claim checkable instead.
These are common details other guides publish about Georgia, but we could not verify them from the agency source. Confirm them directly before relying on them.
No single statewide landscaping contractor license was found among the Georgia agencies that regulate this work. The Department of Agriculture licenses pesticide application, the Soil and Water Conservation Commission certifies land-disturbing work, and the Environmental Protection Division controls backflow testing. Installation, grading, sod, and hardscape work itself is permitted locally rather than licensed statewide.
Mowing alone is not what triggers the state credentials described here. The pesticide contractor license attaches the moment your company applies any pesticide to another person's property for a fee or under a maintenance contract. Erosion certification attaches when you conduct a land-disturbing activity. Local business registration is a separate matter handled by your county or city.
The fee for a new application or a renewal is 55 dollars. Licenses are issued for one year intervals and all current licenses expire at the end of the calendar year in which they were issued. A penalty of 50 percent of the original fee is added for late renewal, so a lapsed December deadline is expensive.
Category 24, Ornamental and Turf Pest Control. It covers commercial applicators using or supervising restricted use pesticides, or state restricted pesticide uses, to control pests in the maintenance and production of ornamental trees, shrubs, flowers, and turf. Category 24 requires ten recertification credit hours. Mosquito work falls under Category 41 instead.
You pass a general standards examination plus at least one category examination, each at 70 percent. The Georgia technical colleges administer it by computer and charge a 45 dollar exam fee every time you sit. Fail and you wait until the following month, and you may not take one exam more than twice in six months.
The Department of Agriculture may seek an injunction against your company and may levy a maximum fine of 1,000 dollars per violation. Each pesticide application performed without the required license may be treated as a separate violation. The Department also publishes a form the public uses to report unlicensed contractors and applicators.
Anyone involved in land development, design, review, permitting, construction, monitoring, inspection, or any land-disturbing activity in Georgia must be certified by the Soil and Water Conservation Commission. Level IA is the contractor credential and makes the holder certified personnel. It requires an approved Fundamentals Seminar and a 70 percent score on the Level IA exam.
It gets a subcontractor legally onto a permitted site, and the Commission's attendee list names irrigation system personnel and landscape personnel. It is not equivalent to Level IA. The Commission states a subcontractor certification does not qualify an individual to perform the duties of a qualified or certified person, which requires Level IA certification.
They do not share a clock. The pesticide contractor license is annual and expires at calendar year end. A commercial applicator license runs five years and needs six or ten credit hours per category. Erosion certification needs four hours of approved continuing education every three years. Backflow tester certification lasts three years and needs six contact hours.
Only if he holds the certification. Georgia requires backflow prevention assemblies to be field tested after installation, repair, or relocation and at least annually, and testing must be done by a certified tester. The Georgia program requires six months of plumbing or water distribution experience, a 32 hour class, a hands-on exam, and a 100 question exam at 70 percent.
The Water Stewardship Act allows daily outdoor watering of plants only between 4 p.m. and 10 a.m. on a permitted water system. New and replanted plant, seed, or turf may be irrigated at any time during installation and for 30 days following the installation date, and installation, maintenance, or calibration of irrigation systems is also exempt.
The Georgia Department of Agriculture runs a public license search at no cost. Separate lookups cover commercial and private applicators, structural pest companies, operators and employees, and every other license the Department issues. Point customers to it in your bid. A prospect can also use it to confirm a cheaper competitor is unlicensed.
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