This page explains how we source what we publish, what we will not do, and how to correct us. It exists because a local directory is only worth reading if you know what is behind the listings.
We are not a lawn care company
We do not mow, spray, install sod, or take service calls. We have no financial relationship with any company listed on this site, and we do not sell leads or take referral fees from service providers.
How companies get listed
Listing is free and always will be. No company has paid to appear, to rank higher, or to be described more favorably.
To be listed in the main directory, a company must have a working website that names Tuscaloosa or Northport in its own service area. That is a low bar deliberately — it is a verification standard, not a quality judgment. Every detail we publish about a company comes from that company’s own website, and we record the date we read it.
Companies with no website appear in a clearly separate section, sourced to the Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama directory, with an explicit note that we could not verify their services.
We exclude lead-generation sites that present themselves as local operators. Several exist in this market — templated per-city pages, no address, no founding information, sometimes two different phone numbers on the same site. They are not companies and we do not list them as such.
Why we publish no star ratings
Because we could not verify any.
Google, Yelp, BBB, Facebook, Angi, and Thumbtack all block automated access to their review data. We are not going to reprint an aggregate we have not confirmed, and we are not going to take a company’s self-published review badge and present it as an independent finding.
Where a company displays its own review figures on its own site, we say exactly that, name the number, and date the observation. The reader can then decide what it is worth.
If ratings matter to your decision, open the platforms and read them. Five minutes there beats any directory’s score.
How we handle facts
Every factual claim links to its source. Prices, dates, license requirements, climate figures. If you cannot click through to where a number came from, we should not have published it.
We show contradictions instead of smoothing them. Alabama Extension publishes different mowing heights in different documents, three different aeration windows, and two different dethatching thresholds. GreenPal publishes two Tuscaloosa mowing averages 57 percent apart. Rather than picking one silently and sounding authoritative, we show the conflict and say which figure we are using.
We label what kind of number something is. An advertised starting price is marketing. A platform average is data of unknown provenance. A national survey average is not a local price. These get conflated constantly and the difference changes what the number means.
We say when we do not know. Some things we could not verify: whether the Auburn soil lab’s $10 fee is still current, a definitive chinch bug activity window for Alabama, the Tuscaloosa County sales tax component, Northport’s business license requirements, standalone overseeding pricing for this market. Those are marked as unverified rather than filled in with something plausible.
We do not average sources together. Combining three estimates into a fourth number that nobody published creates false precision.
About the photographs
The images on this site are illustrative stock photography. They are not photographs of Tuscaloosa lawns, of any company listed in our directory, or of work performed by anyone we write about.
We use them because a wall of unbroken text is hard to read, not because they document anything. No image here should be read as evidence of a claim, and we do not caption them as though it were. Where a picture would need to prove something — what armyworm damage looks like, how a grass species differs from another — we link to a source that has real documentation instead.
We would rather use real ones
If you run a lawn care or landscaping company serving Tuscaloosa County, we would genuinely rather show your work than stock photography. Send us photos of lawns you have actually finished through the contact page and we will use them, credited to your company with a link to your site.
There is no charge and no catch. It is not advertising, it does not buy placement, and it will not change how your listing is written — the rules on that do not bend. We simply think a page about lawn care in Tuscaloosa is better with pictures of lawns in Tuscaloosa on it.
A few things that make a submission usable: shoot in daylight, include the whole lawn rather than a detail, confirm the property owner is fine with the photo being published, and tell us roughly where it was taken. We will not publish an address or anything identifying about the homeowner.
Where our information comes from
In rough order of preference:
- Primary sources — the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries, the Alabama Department of Revenue, the City of Tuscaloosa, NOAA, USDA, the Geological Survey of Alabama
- The Alabama Cooperative Extension System at Auburn University, for anything agronomic
- Companies’ own websites, for anything about those companies
- Neighboring land-grant universities — UGA, Clemson — only where Alabama Extension has published nothing, and always labeled as such
That last point matters more than it sounds. The widely repeated rule about applying pre-emergent before soil hits 55 degrees is not Alabama Extension guidance. It is UGA’s. Alabama Extension uses calendar dates. A lot of Alabama lawn content quotes Georgia research as though it were local, and we try not to.
Advertising and how this site makes money
This site may carry advertising and may use affiliate links. Advertisers have no input into editorial content, do not review anything before publication, and cannot buy a directory listing, a better description, or removal of a competitor.
If we ever accept sponsorship from a company listed in the directory, that relationship will be disclosed on the listing itself, not buried on a policy page. See advertising and our affiliate disclosure.
Corrections
We will correct errors of fact promptly and without argument.
If you run a company listed here and something is wrong — a phone number, a service area, a description, anything — tell us and we will fix it. If you want your listing removed entirely, we will remove it, no questions asked.
If you think we have a fact wrong anywhere else on the site, tell us that too. Extension recommendations change, fee schedules change, city ordinances change, and links rot.
What we cannot do
We cannot diagnose your lawn by email. That needs eyes on the soil, drainage, shade, and history. The Tuscaloosa County Extension Office at 1800 McFarland Blvd E, (205) 349-4630, is a free public service staffed by people who do this professionally.
We cannot recommend a specific contractor. We have not hired any of them. We can tell you what they publish about themselves and how to check a license. The judgment is yours.
Last updated August 17, 2026.