Garden Maintenance on a Rental Property: What Owners and Property Managers Should Agree

Under Victoria’s residential tenancy rules, routine garden upkeep — mowing, basic weeding, watering — is generally treated as the tenant’s job, as part of the general obligation to keep the property reasonably clean, unless the lease says the rental provider will take care of it instead. Larger or specialist work — significant tree pruning, retaining walls, drainage and irrigation repairs — stays with the rental provider no matter what the lease says, because it goes beyond routine upkeep.

None of that is settled automatically just by leasing a property. It is settled by what actually gets written into the agreement, and by whether an owner or property manager decides to arrange maintenance directly rather than leave it to whoever is currently renting.

Who is actually responsible — the legal starting point

Victoria’s Residential Tenancies Act does not list garden maintenance as a specific duty the way it lists items such as smoke alarms or heating under the rental minimum standards — outdoor areas are not part of that minimum standards framework at all. Garden upkeep instead falls under the tenant’s broader obligation to keep the rented property reasonably clean, while the rental provider’s obligation is to keep the property in good repair.

In practice, Rental Dispute Resolution Victoria draws the line at what the job actually needs: regular mowing, light weeding and trimming small plants are treated as the tenant’s routine responsibility, while anything that needs a ladder, a cherry picker or other specialist equipment — major tree work, tree removal, retaining wall repairs, drainage fixes — is the rental provider’s. A lease can vary the routine side of that split (for example, the rental provider agreeing to arrange mowing itself), but it cannot shift the larger structural items onto the tenant.

The garden a tenant moves into is the garden they hand back

A tenant is not liable for restoring a garden to a better state than it was in when the tenancy started. If a property was already overgrown, patchy or poorly established at the start of a lease, that is the baseline a tenant is judged against, not a tidy ideal. This is one of the clearest reasons a thorough condition report — with photographs of the lawn, beds and any hedges, taken at the start of the tenancy — matters as much for the garden as it does for the inside of the house. Without one, a bond dispute over garden condition comes down to two competing memories rather than a record.

Why relying on the tenant does not always work

A tenant doing their own routine mowing and weeding is a reasonable default for a straightforward suburban block. It becomes a less reliable arrangement as the garden gets larger, more established or more visible, because the standard a tenant is willing or able to maintain rarely matches the standard an owner wants a rental property presented at — particularly between tenancies, when a garden with nobody actively living there can slide fastest.

A few situations push owners and property managers toward arranging maintenance directly rather than leaving it to the tenant:

• a larger or semi-rural block where routine upkeep is more than an afternoon’s work — see maintaining a semi-rural block without it becoming a second job for what that actually involves;
• an established garden with mature hedges or layered planting, where the wrong cut or a missed season can undo years of growth — covered in established gardens in Somerville and Baxter;
• a property being actively marketed for sale or a new lease, where street presentation affects how quickly it lets or sells; and
• the gap between tenancies, when a property can sit unattended for weeks with nobody responsible for it day to day.

Property managers and small commercial sites are already a segment Peninsula Hard Yards works with alongside homeowners, and a rental property is one of the more common reasons an owner chooses recurring garden maintenance run directly through the owner or agency rather than left to the tenant to organise. It keeps the standard consistent regardless of who is currently living there.

What to put in writing before a tenancy starts

Whichever way responsibility is split, the dispute risk comes from an assumption that was never actually agreed. A few things are worth settling and recording before a tenant moves in, or before a maintenance arrangement is set up around an existing tenancy:

• what “reasonable” garden upkeep covers in this lease — mowing, weeding and watering are common, but it is worth being specific rather than leaving it implied;
• which larger or specialist tasks stay with the rental provider, and who the tenant should contact if one comes up;
• whether a maintenance service is engaged directly by the owner or agency, and if so, what parts of the garden it covers;
• a condition report with dated photographs of the lawn, beds and any hedges at the start of the tenancy; and
• who the gardener should contact on site if something needs confirming — the tenant, the property manager, or both.

Getting a gardener into a tenanted property

Access is the practical detail that trips up an otherwise sensible arrangement. A gardener working under an owner or property manager’s instruction is still entering a property someone else is living in, and the tenancy agreement — not the gardener — is what governs that entry. It is the rental provider or property manager’s job to give the tenant the written notice Victorian tenancy law requires before anyone attends to carry out maintenance, at a time the tenant has been told about or agreed to, rather than assuming a standing arrangement covers every future visit.

Beyond the legal notice, the same practical details matter as on any other property: gate and lock access, any codes, where a vehicle can park, and whether pets need to be secured for the visit — the kind of detail covered in access, gates and slope. On a tenanted property, it is the property manager’s role to pass that information on and confirm it is current, since the tenant is usually the one who actually knows it.

Recurring visits or a between-tenancy reset

Two different needs come up on rental properties, and they are not the same job. A recurring schedule keeps a property presentable throughout a tenancy regardless of how engaged the current tenant is with the garden, which matters most on larger or higher-presentation properties. A between-tenancy reset is a different, one-off job — bringing a garden back to a clean, lettable state after a tenant moves out, before photographs are taken for the next listing. Both fit within lawn mowing and garden maintenance, and choosing between them, or using both at different points in a tenancy cycle, follows the same logic covered in recurring maintenance or a one-off visit.

Rental turnover is common across suburbs such as Frankston and Langwarrin, which is one reason property managers in those areas tend to already have a maintenance contact on hand rather than starting from scratch every time a lease changes over.

What to include in a quote request for a rental property

A useful quote for a rental property covers a little more than a standard residential job: the property address, who is authorising the work and who should be invoiced, current photographs of the garden, any access arrangements that need to go through a tenant, and whether the request is for an ongoing schedule or a single between-tenancy visit. Quotes are free, and a site visit is required for every new customer, which also gives Brian a chance to note the garden’s actual starting condition — useful for a property manager’s own records as well as for scoping the work. For a property that has already been left too long between tenancies, managing a garden that has got away from you sets out how that kind of catch-up is usually staged.

If a rental portfolio includes more than one property, get in touch to talk through how maintenance can be coordinated across them rather than arranged one at a time.

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