How AI Adoption is Reshaping the Landscaping Industry

Artificial intelligence is no longer a far-off concept. It’s here, it’s evolving quickly, and it’s already reshaping the landscaping industry. In the recent webinar The Future is Bright: Early AI Adoption to Outcompete in Landscaping, Greg Herring (The Herring Group) and Carlos del Pozo (CEO of Team Engine) unpacked how leaders can move beyond the AI hype cycle to capture real business value.

Their message was clear: companies that treat AI adoption as a practical way to solve real-world problems (not just a shiny buzzword) will be the ones that outcompete in the years ahead.

The Rise of Agentic AI

Most business leaders today are familiar with generative AI: tools that draft job ads, summarize resumes, or reformat emails. These applications are useful, but as Carlos explained, they’re only the beginning.

The real transformation will come from agentic AI: systems that don’t just create content, but actually perform tasks on your behalf.

• Generative AI = drafting, writing, summarizing
  
  
• Agentic AI = executing actions, completing processes, following through
  

Greg illustrated the difference with a story about a dental billing company that built an AI agent to call insurance providers. The agent negotiated and collected receivables just like a human staff member. Productivity skyrocketed, not because jobs were eliminated, but because employees could focus on higher-value work instead of chasing overdue claims.

Carlos connected this directly to landscaping businesses:

“One of the places I see a big opportunity for green industry companies is just adding back office capacity and resources that otherwise are very hard to justify.”

Cutting Through the Hype

AI adoption follows what Gartner calls the “hype cycle,” which is a curve that begins with inflated expectations, dips into disappointment, and eventually levels out into sustainable business use.

• Generative AI is already moving into the “trough of disillusionment” as some businesses realize the tools aren’t magic solutions.
  
  
• Agentic AI sits at the “peak of inflated expectations,” where the potential is enormous but not yet fully realized.

This makes landscaping leaders especially vulnerable to empty promises. At trade shows like the Lawn & Landscape Tech Conference, nearly every vendor claims an AI feature. But as Carlos warned, “For a lot of those, you’d have to squint to see the AI aspect. It’s hard for consumers to differentiate between what is real, impactful, and what is just checking the box.”

Why Landscaping Companies Can’t Wait on AI Adoption

Three pressing realities make AI adoption urgent in the landscaping industry:

Labor Shortages

Recruiting and retaining crews is a long-term challenge. AI won’t replace workers, but it can take repetitive tasks off the plate and make existing staff more effective.

Carlos pointed out that leaders shouldn’t just look to software solutions; they also need to explore robotics, immigration programs, and temporary labor. AI fits into that larger toolkit as one of the few levers businesses can pull to stretch limited staff capacity without burning people out.

Back-Office Overload

In smaller businesses, a handful of employees juggle payroll, compliance, and scheduling. Agentic AI can offload repetitive but judgment-heavy tasks that software alone couldn’t handle before.

Carlos shared the example of survey summarization, where one landscaping company had a valuable employee spending days categorizing thousands of responses in English and Spanish. AI was able to do that work in seconds, freeing up the employee for higher-impact responsibilities.

Tougher Competition

Private equity and tech-savvy owners are entering the green industry with more professionalized operations. Businesses that don’t embrace AI adoption risk being left behind.

As Carlos noted, newer entrants often come from technology-first backgrounds, and their approach makes the competitive environment tougher for traditional operators. That means AI adoption is quickly becoming a survival strategy, not a "nice-to-have."

Where AI Can Have an Immediate Impact in Your Business

Landscaping companies don’t need to wait years to benefit. Practical opportunities already exist:

• Operational efficiency – Automating manual, repetitive work that has always required a human touch.
  
  
• Decision-making support – Using AI to analyze surveys, customer feedback, or unstructured job-site data and distill actionable insights. These capabilities are becoming a core part of emerging landscaping technology platforms.
  
  
• Reducing “interface friction” – Allowing crews and managers to interact with systems through natural language instead of complex software menus.

How to Prepare for Agentic AI

Success with AI depends less on the technology itself and more on the context businesses provide. Unlike office environments where nearly everything leaves a digital footprint, landscaping work often happens in the field with little documentation.

That’s why companies should begin capturing more unstructured data today: crew notes, job site photos, chat histories, raw customer feedback. This information may not seem useful now, but it will be critical fuel for future AI systems.

Greg described it this way:

“Don’t worry so much about what you’re going to do with it. Just get it and put it in one place. You can’t go back in time and capture it later.”

Practical Steps to Take Today

Leaders looking to prepare their businesses for the next wave of AI can start small but strategic:

• Rethink costs from the ground up – What would it mean if a highly skilled worker could handle back-office tasks for pennies on the dollar?
• Experiment with today’s tools – Get familiar with generative AI’s strengths and weaknesses.
• Capture unstructured data – Collect photos, chats, and feedback systematically rather than leaving them scattered on personal devices.
• Vet software partners carefully – Choose vendors building AI solutions to solve real problems, not just to meet investor expectations.
• Explore nearshore talent – Assigning work to remote staff can train your organization to define tasks clearly—the same mindset needed for deploying AI agents.

AI Adoption Will Define the Future of the Landscaping Industry

The landscaping industry stands at a crossroads. Landscaping industry trends make it clear that AI isn’t a passing fad; it’s a generational shift in how work gets done. For companies that start capturing data, experimenting with tools, and carefully layering AI into real workflows, the future truly is bright.

But as Carlos cautioned, the same light at the end of the tunnel could also be a freight train barreling toward businesses that stand still. Companies that move early gain a head start now and protect themselves from falling behind later.