NAICS 561730 · California overview

Landscaping & Tree Care Services in Ventura County

Ventura County had 309 Landscaping establishments in 2023, ranking 9 of 53 California counties and accounting for 3.3% of the statewide total.

Establishments (2023)
309
Rank 9 of 53 counties
Employees
2,857
Mid-March employment
Annual payroll
$126M
All establishments
Per 10k residents
3.7
830,851 residents

More recent reading

BLS QCEW, 2026Q1

The figures above are County Business Patterns, which carries the size distribution but runs about two years behind. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes quarterly, so this is the same industry roughly 3 years later. The two count different universes, Census counts establishments with paid employees in the March pay period and BLS counts worksites covered by unemployment insurance during the quarter, so the numbers are not directly comparable and either can be the larger.

Establishments
327
2026Q1
Employment
3,361
Quarter-end level
Average weekly wage
$884
Per covered worker
Quarterly trend
+2.8%
2025Q2 to 2026Q1
Concentration vs the national averageBLS, 2026Q1

1.94 location quotient. Landscaping employment in Ventura County is about 1.9 times more concentrated than in the United States as a whole.

Computed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, not derived here. Above 1.0 means the industry is a larger share of local employment than of national employment.

Establishments by size

Employee-count distribution for Landscaping in Ventura County. 63 of 309 establishments (20%) employ 10 or more people, the practical floor for most acquisition financing.

EmployeesEstablishmentsShareDistribution
1-418760.5%
5-95718.4%
10-19299.4%
20-49227.1%
50-99123.9%

Establishment trend

Year-over-year establishment counts, County Business Patterns. Net growth of 11.2% since 2020.

YearEstablishmentsChange
2020278n/a
2021293+15
2022301+8
2023309+8

How this market compares

Ventura County against every other county in California on the same measure. The median excludes places under 2,000 residents, where per-capita figures are arithmetically true but analytically useless.

Above average3.7 per 10,000 residents, against a state median of 2.7

More provision than the typical California market of this size. Usually a sign of genuine local demand rather than oversupply.

Vs state median
+38%
Businesses per resident
Rank by count
#9
of 53 counties
Rank by density
#20
of 53 ranked
Since 2020
+11%
Change in establishments

Density compares landscaping & tree care services provision per resident. It does not measure revenue, profitability or whether a market is worth entering.

Business size mix

Ventura tracks the California size distribution closely.

Share of establishmentsVenturaCaliforniaDifference
Under 5 employeesOwner-operated, often no management layer60.5%61.7%-1.2%
5 to 49 employeesThe range most individual buyers target35.0%33.7%+1.2%
10 or more employeesPractical floor for acquisition financing20.4%20.5%-0.1%

What acquirers look at

Commercial recurring contracts are the prize; residential mow-and-blow routes trade at much lower multiples, and route density drives margin more than revenue does. Tree care is the equipment-heavy end of the category, with real collateral value for SBA lending and durable utility line-clearance contracts.

Cities in Ventura

The figures above cover the county as a whole. These are the places within it.

Other industries in Ventura

Sources

  1. U.S. Census Bureau, 2023 County Business Patterns. Establishment counts, employment and annual payroll by NAICS. Retrieved 2026-09-08.
  2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (2026Q1). Quarterly establishment counts and employment for employers covered by unemployment insurance. Retrieved 2026-09-08.