Grant County, SD has 1.3× fewer landscaping and lawn-care businesses per resident than the national average.
Grant County, SD has 4 with employees and 7 without — 11 landscaping and lawn-care services in total, 14.5 per 10,000 residents against a national rate of 18.2. That's 1.3× fewer than average (US Census, County Business Patterns + Nonemployer Statistics 2023).
- In Grant County
- 4
- Per 10k residents
- 14.5
- National rate
- 18.2
- Ratio
- 1.3× fewer than average
Population 7,571. Ranked 5 of 25 South Dakota counties with enough landscaping & lawn care data to compare — 1 = fewest per resident.
Source: US Census County Business Patterns ↗Grant County, SD had 4 landscaping and lawn-care services with employees in 2022 and 4 in 2023 — little changed. Nationally the count grew 1% over the same years.
What this doesn't tell you: Census counts how many exist each year, not how many opened or closed. A count that barely moves can still hide plenty of churn underneath it. It also can't see solo operators without employees, in any year.
Series runs 2022–2023. Earlier vintages exist but are not comparable: Census changed which small counties it publishes after 2016, so including them would show counties losing an industry that never left.
Census code 561730 covers landscaping services: lawn maintenance and mowing, planting, tree and shrub work, and landscape design and installation.
The blind spot: The code mixes large landscape-installation firms in with routine mowing. A county can have several big design-and-build landscapers and still be short of anyone who will simply cut a lawn every two weeks.
What this doesn't tell you: A low count can mean an opening — or that there's less local demand for it. This counts how many businesses exist, including sole proprietors, but not how many customers want one. Treat it as a lead to check, not a verdict.
County Business Patterns counts establishments with paid employees. A solo operator with no payroll — the most likely competitor for most of these businesses — is invisible to it, in every county, including this one.
Fewer of these per resident than the country average is a reason to look, not a reason to start. The two explanations the data cannot separate are “nobody has served this yet” and “there is less to serve here” — a county with few pool services may simply have few pools. The next step is not a business plan, it is ten phone calls to people in Grant County who would pay for it.
Census counts these as one industry, so the 4 above includes all of them together. It cannot tell you how many are any single one.
Get the county numbers for your town, free.