We have been maintaining grounds and external areas for clients for some time, usually as part of a wider cleaning or maintenance contract rather than as a service in its own right. What has changed is not the work, it is the way we describe it. Commercial landscaping and grounds maintenance now sits alongside Build, Maintain and Clean as a core ECMS service, with its own set of service pages. You can see the full range on our Landscape pages.
Why it is a core service now
The reason is straightforward, and it came from our clients rather than from us.
A large part of what we do is consolidation. A site that once had four suppliers, four contracts and four invoices ends up with one specification, one account manager and one point of accountability. It is usually where the saving is, and it is almost always where the improvement in standards comes from, because nobody can point at anybody else when something goes wrong.
Grounds were the obvious gap. We would take on the cleaning and the building maintenance for a business park or a managed estate, and the external areas would stay with a separate contractor on a separate schedule. When something fell between the two, and it regularly did, it was the client who ended up co-ordinating it.
So we took it on. One site, then another, wherever a client asked us to bring the grounds in with everything else. That has been going on quietly for a while without ever appearing on our website as something you could ask us for. Enough sites are now on the books, and enough clients have asked, that leaving it unlisted stopped making sense.
What we deliver
Year-round programmes covering grass, hedges, borders, weed control, leaf clearance and tree work, set to the site rather than to a standard schedule.
Planting schemes, turfing, borders and horticultural improvement, specified for the aspect and the amount of attention it will realistically get.
Paving, footpaths, steps, drainage, fencing and the external repairs that keep a site safe and compliant.
Winter gritting and snow clearance on a forecast trigger with a record of every visit, plus autumn and spring works.
Pressure washing, car parks, bin stores, graffiti and gum removal, and external cleaning.
Habitat creation, water reduction and the reporting that turns it into something you can put in an ESG return.
We also install and dress commercial Christmas trees, which is a small service that generates a disproportionate number of enquiries every autumn.
WHO IT IS FOR
Offices and business parks, managed estates and residential developments, schools and colleges, healthcare sites and public sector estates, across London, Kent, Surrey and Sussex. Single sites and multi-site portfolios both. Most of the grounds work we do today is on sites where we already hold the cleaning or the maintenance contract, though we are just as happy to take the grounds on their own.
How it works alongside everything else
The same way the rest of our contracts work, and it always has. That is rather the point.
Directly employed teams rather than a rotating pool of agency labour. A named account manager who knows the site. Supervisor inspections against the agreed specification, with the findings shared rather than filed. Method statements, risk assessments and COSHH documentation as standard. It sits under the same ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 certification as everything else we do.
Where a client already has cleaning or maintenance with us, grounds can go onto the existing contract rather than becoming a new one. For a number of our clients that is already the arrangement.
The environmental side
Grounds are one of the few places on a commercial site where environmental commitments become visible. Habitat creation, pollinator planting and reduced-mow areas are straightforward to introduce without losing the standards a commercial site needs to hold. Smart self-watering systems have cut water use substantially on the landscaping contracts where we have installed them.
That matters to us as well as to our clients. ECMS became a Certified B Corporation in July 2026, and we hold ISO 14001 and Planet Mark. Our own environmental performance is independently assessed, which is worth something if you are being asked to evidence your supply chain.
Talking to us about it
If your grounds contract is coming up for renewal, or the external areas are the part of your site that never quite gets sorted, we will come and walk it with you. The survey is free and there is no obligation either way.
If we already look after your cleaning or your building maintenance, speak to your account manager. Adding the grounds to an existing contract is usually a conversation rather than a tender.
