In many landscaping businesses the about page is the page nobody looks after. It appears at the end of the website project, once the services are written and the references are sorted, and it is filled with whatever is at hand: a sentence about passion for green spaces, a photograph of the company sign, a paragraph about quality and reliability. In the access figures it still ranks high, usually right behind the home page and the service overview (project experience). The reason is simple: someone having a garden built spends a sum in the region of a kitchen or a vehicle, and lets strangers onto their property for weeks. Before anyone does that, they want to know who they are dealing with. That is exactly the question an about page answers — or fails to answer.
Key takeaways
- The about page is read by people who are close to enquiring and want to check whether the business fits their project — it is a sales page, not a name plate parked at the end of the navigation.
- Six details carry the page: founding year and management, number of staff, trades carried out in house, trades covered with partner firms, training and qualifications, and machinery, yard and service area.
- If individual trades are covered by partner firms, say so: naming them rarely costs a job, but it prevents follow-up questions and the later accusation that a project was passed on without notice.
- Businesses that train apprentices should state it: landscaping apprenticeships in Germany run for three years (BGL), and training proves technical supervision and continuity without a single adjective.
- Stock phrases about passion, quality and reliability can neither be checked nor disputed; replace each of them with a verifiable detail and the page becomes shorter and more convincing at the same time.
Why the about page helps sell the work
In landscape gardening people rarely buy a product; they buy a promise. Someone undertakes to transform, in eight weeks, an area that was previously lawn, gravel or building site. Until handover the customer holds nothing but a quote and an impression. Reference photographs show what a business can do. Service pages show what it offers. The about page is the only place that says who stands behind it — and that is precisely why it gets opened shortly before somebody fills in the form or picks up the phone.
These readers have a concrete question in mind, even if they would never phrase it that way: is this business big enough for my project and small enough that I am not the least important job of the year? A homeowner with a forty square metre terrace and a property manager with six sites in grounds maintenance ask the same question from opposite ends. Neither finds the answer in adjectives; both find it in numbers and trades. Writing the page so that both groups can place themselves saves a share of the conversations that otherwise end after five minutes with a polite no.
There is a second group of readers that is often overlooked: applicants. Anyone looking for work as a landscape gardener or foreman reads the about page just as carefully as a client does, only with different questions — company size, crew strength, machinery, training, how long people stay. A page containing those details therefore also works for your job adverts without a second text having to be written. That is one reason why effort spent on this single page pays off more than on most others.
Founding and management
Since when the business has existed, who runs it today, which generation. A year and a name are enough; nobody is interested in the full chronicle.
Size of the business
Staff, apprentices, number of crews. This figure places the business and answers the question of suitable job size in passing.
Trades done in house
What is carried out with your own people, listed by name: paving, walls, fences, ponds, planting, lawns, maintenance, winter service.
Partner firms
What is regularly handled with fixed partners — electrics, structural calculations, pond technology, drilling. Stated openly rather than explained later.
Training and certificates
Master craftsman status, training company, certificates of competence, tree care qualifications. Only what actually exists and may be claimed.
Machinery, yard, area
Vehicle fleet in outline, the yard, storage space and the radius you work in. Three sentences that make the business tangible.
Since when and by whom: history without a chronicle
The founding year is the simplest trust-building detail a website has, and it is missing surprisingly often. It works in both directions. A business that has existed since the eighties demonstrates that it has survived recessions, price shocks and a handover between generations. A business founded four years ago demonstrates something else with the same detail: that the owner learned and worked somewhere before, and that is exactly what belongs in the following sentence. Staying silent helps in neither case, because the question comes anyway — only later and on the phone.
What does not belong on the page is the full company chronicle with a date for every extension to the shed. Such timelines are a favourite in website templates and are rarely read to the end. Three or four sentences suffice: when founded, by whom, who runs it today, what has fundamentally changed since. The handover between generations is the one milestone almost always worth mentioning, because it proves two things at once — continuity, and the fact that somebody considered the business viable enough to take it on.
More important than the year is the person. A name with a role and a photograph of the human being rather than the company sign: that is the difference between a firm and a contact. Anyone hesitating can use a simple test — would you hand this business a key to your garden gate if all you knew was the website? Without a face and a name the answer is hard. The same rules apply to image selection as to the rest of the page; our article on photographs for your website covers what to watch out for.
No founding year? Then experience
How many people: the figure nobody wants to name
Staff numbers are the detail most often talked around. Small businesses fear looking too small, larger ones fear looking impersonal, and both fall back on phrasing such as "a well-rehearsed team" or "our experienced crew". The result is that nobody learns anything and the question gets asked in the first call regardless. Yet the figure itself is neutral: it says nothing about quality, only about capacity — and capacity is precisely what clients want to place.
A bare number does look dry. Better is the number with its breakdown: how many staff in total, how many of them on site, how many apprentices, how many crews are out at the same time. For a client the number of crews is more informative than the headcount, because it answers the real question: how many sites run in parallel and how soon is my turn? Adding that a site is normally looked after by the same crew until completion pre-empts one of the most common worries.
A small business does not have to apologise for its size — it only has to translate it into a statement. Three people, one site at a time, the owner there every day is a selling point, not a confession. Conversely, a firm with fifty employees should dispel the fear of anonymity: a fixed contact, a named site manager, a phone number that does not end in a switchboard. In both cases the effect comes not from the figure but from the sentence that follows it.
| Common phrasing | What it proves | Version that carries weight |
|---|---|---|
| A well-rehearsed team of professionals | Nothing — every business would write it | Fourteen staff, three crews, two apprentices |
| Many years of experience in landscaping | Nothing checkable, no period given | Founded in 1994, run by the second generation since 2019 |
| Everything from a single source | Hides what is bought in | Paving, walls and planting in house; electrics and statics with fixed partners |
| State-of-the-art machinery | A superlative without content | Two mini excavators, wheel loader, tipper, plate compactors, own trailers |
| Highest quality and reliability | Self-praise, not verifiable | Master craftsman business, training company, handover with report and care notes |
| We work throughout the region | No area, no distance | Roughly forty kilometres around the yard, towns listed by name |
Separating in-house work from partner firms
"Everything from a single source" is the most written sentence on landscaping websites and also the one that causes the most trouble. Hardly any business really carries out every trade itself: the electrical connection for garden lighting needs a qualified electrician, a retaining wall above a certain height needs structural calculations, swimming pond technology needs a specialist, crown work in a mature tree needs a certified climber. That is entirely normal and often the better solution. It only becomes a problem when the customer sees an unfamiliar van in the drive on day three and nobody prepared them for it.
The about page is the right place for this distinction, because there it reads as order rather than limitation. Two lists are enough: what we carry out with our own people, and what we entrust to fixed partner firms. The second point gains from a sentence describing how long the cooperation has run and who handles coordination — namely you. That removes the core worry: the customer does not want a business that does everything itself, they want one contact for everything.
This separation has a second benefit that is often overlooked: it deflects enquiries that do not fit. Stating clearly that grounds maintenance runs with your own crews while larger earthworks are handled with a civil engineering partner means fewer tenders land on your desk that you would have declined anyway. And trades you do not offer at all should be named too. A clear sentence about what you do not do costs two lines and saves a considerable number of phone calls across the year.
- List in-house trades by name rather than under the umbrella term "landscaping"
- Name partner trades and state who handles coordination and warranty
- Name trades the business explicitly does not offer, such as pool construction or carpentry
- Indicate job sizes: the smallest sensible job and the typical scope of a project
- State the service area with a radius and three to five towns instead of "the whole region"
- Link to the matching service pages so the about page can stay short
- Check every statement against whether it could be substantiated in a first conversation
Training and qualifications as quiet evidence
Apprenticeships in German landscape gardening normally run for three years (BGL) and end with a journeyman's examination; master craftsman, technician and specialist tree care qualifications build on that. Within the trade these qualifications are taken for granted; for clients they are anything but. Naming them on the about page delivers evidence that needs no adjectives: master craftsman status is a fact, "highest quality" is a claim. The same applies to certificates of competence, for instance in plant protection, or to proof of training in tree care and rope access.
Particularly effective is stating that the business trains apprentices. It proves several things at once without saying them: that somebody on the staff holds the required instructor qualification, that there is enough work for a multi-year commitment, and that the business plans beyond the end of the season. For applicants it is one of the first questions anyway. A sentence about the number of apprentices and how many stayed after their examination is therefore worth more than a paragraph on team spirit — provided the figure is correct and updated once a year.
Care is needed with anything that sounds like a protected title. Only a business that actually meets the requirements may call itself a master craftsman business; memberships belong on the page under their correct name and without embellishment, and certificates with expiry dates need upkeep or they will sit there expired. The finer legal points of advertising with qualifications cannot be settled here; when in doubt it is sensible to have the individual case checked before a designation goes on the website permanently.
The rule for every sentence on this page
Machinery, the yard and what the pictures should show
Machinery belongs on the page, but in outline and without a data sheet. Nobody outside the trade cares about model designations; what matters is the statement behind them, namely that the business owns the equipment to carry out a project of a certain size without hired plant and without waiting. Two mini excavators, a wheel loader, tippers, plate compactors, a set of trailers, a chipper for green waste: that list tells a homeowner more about the feasibility of their terrace than any promise. The same applies to winter service or commercial grounds maintenance with different equipment.
Photographs of the yard are the most underrated type of image in landscaping. Reference photographs show finished gardens, and finished gardens look good at every business. Your own yard shows something that cannot be copied: order, vehicles, storage, material bays, signwritten vans, people in work clothing. Three to five such shots replace half a paragraph of text. They need not be elaborate, but they must be genuine — stock material is noticed the moment somebody stands on the yard, and it damages exactly the trust the page is meant to build.
A good moment for these shots is a dry winter morning or a Saturday before the season starts, when the vehicles are on the yard and clean. If you take the pictures with a phone, watch for even light, straight lines and the absence of number plates and uninvolved people. It is worth reviewing your existing project images in the same session and updating the portfolio gallery so that both pages show the same state of the business.
An about page is good when a customer no longer has to ask how big the business is and who will actually be doing the work.
Stock phrases that prove nothing — and the replacements
"With a passion for green spaces", "the customer is at the centre of everything we do", "quality from master craftsmen", "we live your garden": these sentences appear on many pages and share one property — they can neither be verified nor contradicted. That is precisely why they have no effect. A sentence that applies to every business in the trade distinguishes none of them. It still takes up space and, worse, it crowds out the detail that could have stood there instead.
The exchange is more mechanical than it sounds. Every stock phrase has a verifiable counterpart. "We work cleanly" becomes the statement that the site is left swept every evening and that material storage areas are agreed in advance. "We are reliable" becomes the note that dates are confirmed in writing and delays are reported the same day. "Fair prices" becomes a description of how a quote is built: by item, with quantities, with additional costs shown separately. Each version is longer and still read faster, because it is new.
There is one exception where the personal belongs on the page: when it explains a decision. Writing that the business grew out of a sideline because nobody in the village was cutting hedges any more tells something concrete and checkable. So does writing that you specialised in natural stone because your previous employer never worked with the range of materials you wanted. Personal is not the same as effusive — personal means a particular person made a particular decision, and that can be told without a single superlative.
About us
1 The business in four sentences founding, management, base, service area
2 Figures staff, apprentices, crews
3 What we carry out ourselves trades by name, link to service pages
4 What we bring partners in for electrics, statics, pond technology, climbing
5 Training and certificates master craftsman, training company, competence
6 Yard, store and machinery three to five genuine photographs, no stock
7 The people name, role, with the firm since
8 Where to go next references, services, vacanciesStructure, order and length of the page
The order follows the reader's curiosity, not the company history. At the top sit the details that place the business: founding, base, size, service area. Then comes the distinction between in-house work and partners, because it answers the practical question of who will be on the property. Training and certificates follow, then yard and machinery, then the people. At the end stand the routes onward — to the references, to the services, to the vacancies. Keep that order and the page can be almost any length without becoming tiring, because each section answers its own question.
On length: an about page that can be skimmed on a phone in under two minutes is usually too thin; one that has you scrolling until your thumb tires is too long. Six to eight short sections with subheadings that read on their own work well in practice. The reason is reading behaviour: most landscaping enquiries arise on a phone in the evening, and there the page is scanned rather than read. Subheadings that contain a statement carry the page even for someone who only moves their thumb.
Collect the details before writing
Founding year, staff numbers, apprentices, crews, trades in house and with partners, certificates, vehicles, radius. This list takes twenty minutes and is the actual work on the page.
Write one sentence per detail
One sentence for each item, without adjectives. Only once all the sentences exist do you decide which belong together and in what order they should be read.
Delete and replace stock phrases
Hold every sentence against the question of whether a competitor could write it word for word. If so: delete it or replace it with the verifiable counterpart.
Add pictures of the yard and the team
Three to five of your own shots of yard, vehicles and people. Consent is on file for anyone shown; number plates and uninvolved passers-by stay out of frame.
Set the onward links and close
At the end, links lead to references, services and vacancies. The about page does not have to sell anything; it has to make the next step possible.
Update once a year, or it ages quietly
The about page has the highest decay rate of any page, because it consists almost entirely of details that change. The staff figure is wrong after two hires, the apprentice from back then is now a foreman, the old wheel loader has been sold, a partner firm has closed. None of this is dramatic, but together it produces a page describing the business of four years ago — and a customer notices at the site visit at the latest, when the vehicles on the yard are not the ones in the pictures.
A review interval of twelve months is enough, and the best date for it falls in winter, when quotes are being written and figures sorted anyway (project experience). The pass takes barely half an hour: update figures, remove people who have left, add new certificates, review the fleet, check the images are current. If the page is looked after as part of ongoing website maintenance, this item can be fixed in the annual routine instead of being remembered each time.
Finally, a note on how the page works. The about page sells nothing on its own. It relieves the pages that do sell. If it says who the business is, the service page does not have to hint at it and the first conversation does not have to explain it. A business such as Viktor Waldbauer Garten- und Landschaftsbau in Nordstemmen, whose work ranges from sand-set slabs and terraces to cisterns and complete garden installations, makes one thing clear above all: the breadth of your own work should be named on the website, because otherwise nobody knows about it. How that meshes with the rest of the page structure is covered in our overview of the landscaping website.