Warranty in landscaping: two periods, one site

The colloquial German word for warranty appears in none of the statutes that govern a landscaping contract. The Civil Code speaks of defect claims under a works contract and regulates how long those claims remain enforceable before they become time-barred. What is meant is the duty to produce a work with the agreed characteristics, fit for the intended use — and the duty to remedy it where it is not. That duty arises from the contract itself. Nobody has to promise it separately, and against consumers it cannot simply be negotiated away.

A guarantee is something else. It is a voluntary promise going beyond the statutory duty: the business stands behind a particular characteristic for a particular period, regardless of fault. Whoever gives a guarantee defines its content — and is then bound by it. That is precisely why the establishment guarantee is such a delicate phrase: it is offered often, written down rarely and limited even more rarely. A promise made verbally and bounded nowhere will, in a dispute, be read against the person who formulated it.

The third term is goodwill. It is the voluntary act with no legal duty behind it, usually out of regard for the customer relationship. For the business the distinction is not academic: a defect claim creates a duty, a guarantee creates a self-imposed duty, goodwill creates none. Saying „of course we will sort that out“ on the phone without naming the level gives that distinction away. The clean version is simpler: we will look at it, classify it and come back with a proposal.

The limitation period begins with handover (section 634a BGB). That sounds obvious and is the most common gap in daily practice: many businesses cannot say years later when a work was accepted, because there was no appointment and no piece of paper. Without a handover date it cannot be determined whether a period has expired — and in a dispute the business stands in a weaker position than necessary. Handover may be declared formally, it may follow from the customer taking the installation into use, and it may occur where the customer fails to respond after a deadline without naming defects. Only the formal route can be evidenced afterwards.

On mixed contracts, partial handovers are worth considering. Where the paving is finished in October and the planting follows in March, those are two services with different periods and different completion dates. A partial handover for the built element brings the price forward, starts the period for that part and prevents the whole installation from hanging on a vegetation service still outstanding. It has to be provided for in the contract; afterwards it can only be arranged by agreement.

Handover is not an administrative formality but the most valuable half hour in the entire project. It is the moment when the customer looks at the installation deliberately for the first time, when snagging items are small and negotiable, when care instructions land, and when a release for reference photographs can be obtained without effort. Skipping the appointment and sending the invoice instead moves all of that into later phone calls — where it costs a multiple.

The technical rulebooks for landscaping works separate three stages of care, and that separation decides where responsibility sits. Establishment care runs up to the state in which the work can be accepted and forms part of the production service; it is covered by the contract price. Development care begins afterwards and brings the installation into a functioning state — it is a service in its own right and has to be ordered and paid for separately. Ongoing maintenance keeps the state that has been reached and belongs in its own contract with a term and a schedule of services.

For the warranty question this is the decisive point. Where development care is not ordered, the customer takes on watering, watering rounds, pruning and stability checks. If a plant fails because that did not happen, the cause lies outside the service owed. It can only be evidenced, however, where the transfer of that responsibility is documented: in the quote as a declined or unordered item, in the protocol as care instructions handed over, in the briefing as a point signed for. Without that trail it is one account against another, and although the burden of proof shifts after handover, the business still has to be able to explain the facts.

Four years after completion nobody remembers the thickness of the base course, the variety of hornbeam that was delivered, or whether the customer declined the development care. What was not filed does not exist in a dispute. The handover folder is therefore not a bureaucratic project but an insurance policy costing roughly half an hour per project (project experience) — spread across moments when the crew is on site anyway.

Particularly valuable are shots of everything that later disappears below the surface: the excavation, the base course before compaction, the edge restraint in concrete, the drainage, the routing of the irrigation lines. A photograph with a folding rule in frame replaces a later argument. Those same images are, incidentally, the raw material for a solid portfolio gallery — the work gets documented either way, it simply does not get kept. Add delivery notes for plant stock with variety and grade, test certificates for bulk materials, and a note on which items the customer struck out.

A complaint is first of all information, not a demand. The most common mistake is the immediate answer in either direction — either something is promised before the cause is known, or refused before anyone has looked. Both are costly: the first creates a duty, the second an escalation. The middle path is a sentence that buys time and shows attention, followed by a site visit within a few days.

The visit is about establishing facts, not classifying them. What can be seen, since when, over what extent, what has happened since handover? Only afterwards comes the question of which period applies, whether this is a defect, a guarantee case or a consequence of missing care, and whether anything is time-barred at all. That classification belongs at the desk, not in the garden — and on larger sums it belongs in a legal review. A factual written proposal afterwards is often cheaper, where the customer relationship is worth keeping, than resolving the legal position in full.