Landscape professionals

One title, two different jobs

"Landscape professional" can mean two very different things. One is a maintenance contractor who mows, prunes, edges, and runs the irrigation system for the shrubs, turf, and beds in the common area. The other is a landscape architect who designs grading, drainage, retaining walls, or hardscape, work that shapes how water moves across the property for years afterward. A board that treats both as the same hire, and asks the same three questions of each, is checking the wrong things for at least one of them. Before you sign anything, decide which job you actually need done.

Verify the credential, not the title

Neither role has one nationwide license the way an attorney or a CPA does. Some states and municipalities license landscape architects; landscaping contractors are sometimes licensed at the trade or municipal level and sometimes not licensed at all. Do not take a candidate's business card at its word. Ask directly: what license or certification applies to this specific scope of work, in this state and this municipality, and how do I verify it myself? A candidate who cannot answer that question specifically is telling you something.

Where competitive bidding does, and does not, apply

Some states require the board to solicit competitive bids (an RFP) once a contract crosses a set size, and some carve out named professions from that requirement. Florida is one example: bidding is required once payment under a contract exceeds 5 percent of the association's total annual budget, but the statute exempts a specific list of professional services, including landscape architect services, from that requirement entirely.

"contracts with employees of the association, and contracts for attorney, accountant, architect, community association manager, timeshare management firm, engineering, and landscape architect services"

Source: Fla. Stat. Section 718.3026, Florida Legislature

Notice what is on that list and what is not. Landscape architect services made the cut; ordinary landscaping maintenance contracts did not. Whether your state has a bidding requirement at all, what triggers it, and which professions it exempts vary by state, so check your own statute and governing documents before assuming a routine mowing and irrigation contract is exempt just because it involves plants.

Put the scope in writing, then let it do the protecting

A signed contract or engagement letter controls what the professional actually agreed to do; an oral understanding does not bind either side the way a written scope does. Spell out what is routine maintenance, what counts as extra work, and who pays for it. That written scope also matters if a decision is ever questioned later. A board that acts in good faith, exercises the care an ordinarily prudent person would use, and reasonably believes it is serving the association's interests, including by reasonably relying on advice within a retained professional's competence, is exercising its fiduciary duty the way the business judgment rule expects.

"good faith... ordinarily prudent person in a like position would exercise under similar circumstances... in a manner the director reasonably believes to be in the best interests of the corporation"

Source: The Business Judgment Rule, Colorado Homeowners Association Law

That protection covers a decision made in reasonable reliance on the contractor's or architect's advice. It does not cover a decision made in spite of that advice, or advice from someone with no plausible competence in the subject.