Texas is a big lawn market and a thin website market. A lot of good crews are still a yard sign and a Facebook page. That is enough while the route is full of people who already know the truck. It is a poor way to meet the household that just moved to Edinburg, Katy, Frisco, or Pflugerville and will not ask a stranger for a name.
This is not legal, tax, or insurance advice. The links below are the official pages. Read them. The Texas landscaping guide is the long version of this note: filing fee, irrigation, pesticides, sales tax, and the city pages for Houston, Dallas–Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, and McAllen–Edinburg. The start checklist is the same shape for any trade.
Decide which job you are actually selling
"Full service landscaping" is how a new company attracts the estimate it cannot price. Weekly mowing, irrigation repair, a bed rebuild, palm work, and a one-time rescue of a yard that cooked in July are different visits. Pick the one you can finish with the trailer you have. Add the next one when the first has a route.
The city changes the sentence. In the McAllen–Edinburg metro the work does not pause for winter. Turf and hedges fail in the heat unless the irrigation is real, and palm or citrus is a different stop than a weekly cut. North McAllen, Edinburg, Mission, Pharr, and Palmhurst are a believable map. "South Texas" is not.
Houston is St. Augustine, fungus, irrigation, and the week after a flood. The Heights, Meyerland, Katy, The Woodlands, and Pearland do not hire from the same photo. If you will not cross the city in traffic, say which side you keep.
Dallas–Fort Worth is clay, irrigation, freeze damage, and hail-battered beds, spread across two cities and a ring of HOA suburbs. Plano and Frisco customers are used to letters from the association. Fort Worth and Oak Cliff are often an older yard, not a new sod package. "DFW and surrounding areas" is how a page admits it does not know where the truck goes.
Austin is watering rules, thin soil, oak and cedar debris, and subdivisions that expect a weekly cut. Circle C and Pflugerville are not Hyde Park. A page that mentions drought stages and irrigation, and shows work under real trees, sounds like a company that has spent a summer there.
If your customers call in Spanish, English, or both, the person who answers the number on the page has to be able to have that conversation. A translated slogan and a confused callback is worse than a plain page and a clear one.
Name it, then file it
Use a name you can say on the phone and spell in a text. The Texas Secretary of State is where an LLC gets a certificate of formation. The instructions for Form 205 list the filing fee, currently published there as $300, and they say the office cannot tell you which entity you should pick. A sole proprietorship can be you, under your own name, without that filing. If you are unsure, ask an accountant or a lawyer before you pay the fee. The formation FAQ is the state's own version of that warning.
Get the EIN from the IRS, not from a website that charges to "file" it. The IRS issues the number at no charge and says you never have to pay a fee for one. File the LLC first if you are forming one. The IRS says an EIN application can stall when the state filing is not done.
Open a business checking account once the name and the tax ID are real. Keep the mowing money out of the personal account, and set tax money aside in a good month before it feels like profit.
What Texas licenses, and what it does not
TDLR licenses electricians, air-conditioning contractors, and a long list of other occupations. A general landscaper license is not on that list. Mowing a yard is not the same as pulling an electrical permit.
Irrigation is different. Occupations Code chapter 1903 says a person who sells, designs, installs, maintains, alters, repairs, or services a landscape irrigation system needs a license from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, unless an exemption applies. A hose on the homeowner's own yard is one of the exemptions written into the statute. A crew that installs systems for pay is the job the license is for. The practical page is the TCEQ landscape irrigator license. Read the exemptions before you decide you are in or out.
Pesticides are different again. The Texas Department of Agriculture says anyone who applies a pesticide, including a general-use product, to ornamental plants, trees, lawns, or weeds for hire must be licensed. Applicators who apply only fertilizer do not need that license. If you spray, read the page and get the license. If you only mow, do not advertise spraying.
Cities and water districts can still want a registration, a permit, or an irrigation inspection even when the state list looks empty. Call the city you will work in and write down what they say.
Sales tax is part of the job
The Comptroller's publication 94-112, Landscaping and Lawn Care Services, says planting, mowing, trimming, fertilizing, and tree work of that kind are taxable. It also describes a narrow exception for a self-employed person who does the work, has no employees, and whose receipts from those services stay at or under $5,000 for the most recent four quarters. Read the publication before you rely on the exception. The sales tax permit FAQ says there is no fee for the permit, and that a security bond can still be required.
Insurance, then a page
General liability before you put a mower on someone else's grass. If anyone rides along, ask about workers' compensation before they do. A realtor or an HOA will ask for a certificate sooner than a homeowner will.
Then publish the page. Say which service you want, name the towns, and give people a form that asks whether they want a recurring cut or a one-time cleanup. The guides for McAllen–Edinburg, Houston, Dallas–Fort Worth, and Austin are the local version of what that page has to say. Create the free landscaping site when the name and the phone are ready. The site does not get the license or the sales tax permit. It gives the new customer a place to send the address that is not a comment on a post.