Iowa Lawn & Snow is a small, independent guide to snow removal and lawn care for Iowa homes. It started in Waukee and the Des Moines metro and now covers 38 Iowa towns, from Ames and Cedar Rapids to the Quad Cities, Dubuque, Sioux City and the Iowa Great Lakes. It is run by Kasey, a Waukee resident. We are not a snow removal or lawn care company, and we don't sell ice melt, fertilizer or lawn products.
How we write our guides
- Sourced, not guessed. City snow rules come from each city's own website or code. Lawn and de-icing advice comes from Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. We also use the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS), the Iowa Attorney General, the Iowa Department of Revenue, Iowa DOT, the National Weather Service in Des Moines and the U.S. EPA. Every page lists its sources with the date we checked them.
- Snow rules change. We show each city's sidewalk deadline with a link to the city page we read. If a deadline matters to you, check that page before you rely on ours.
- No made-up numbers. We don't publish prices, ratings or statistics unless an official source gives them, and we say where they came from.
- Safety and labels first. For fertilizers, herbicides and de-icers, we tell you to read and follow the label.
Listing criteria
Our local pros page lists companies that offer snow removal and/or lawn care in the Iowa cities we cover. Every listing follows these rules:
- Checked on the company's own website. We add a company only after reading its own working website, not a directory, review site or lead-generation page. Each listing links to the pages we checked and the date we checked them.
- Real, local, identifiable business. The site has to clearly identify the company and say it serves the Iowa town it's listed under. We skip template or placeholder sites, keyword sites with no company behind them, sites that don't load, out-of-state companies and businesses without their own website.
- Only what they publish. Phone numbers and street addresses appear only if the company shows them on its own site. We don't publish email addresses. Services (plowing, shoveling, salting, mowing, fertilizing and so on) are summarized from the company's own wording, and a company is listed under a town only if its site names that town.
- Snow removal has no state license. Iowa has no state license for snow plowing or shoveling, so we never claim one.
- Lawn chemical license: verified, not assumed. In Iowa, a business that applies pesticides (including weed and insect control) to other people's property needs an IDALS commercial applicator license. For companies whose sites list fertilizer or weed, insect or other lawn treatments, we search the IDALS license lookup by company name and show one of three statuses: record found (a matching, unexpired company record), no record found under that name, or not confirmed (only a similar or expired record). A company saying it is licensed is not enough for us to say so.
- No rankings, reviews or prices. Companies are listed free and alphabetically. A company can pay for one labeled Sponsored spot on a town page (see the advertising disclosure below), but nobody pays to be listed or to move up the free list.
- Re-checked regularly. We plan to re-check listings about once a month and remove companies whose sites no longer support the listing.
Listings are informational, not endorsements. Get written quotes and check licenses yourself before hiring. Is your business missing or wrong? Contact us to request a correction, an addition or removal.
Advertising disclosure
Iowa Lawn & Snow is free to use and is supported in part by sponsored spots:
- A verified local company can pay for one spot at the top of a town's company list and in our sidewalk deadline checker results for that town. That spot is always labeled "Sponsored."
- Sponsors must meet the same listing criteria as everyone else and must serve the town they sponsor. We may decline any company.
- Sponsorship doesn't change what we write about a company, its license status, our city rules or our guides. All other companies are listed free and never ranked for pay.
- Sponsored links are marked as sponsored for search engines.
- We don't run third-party ad networks or advertising trackers.
Companies can learn more on our advertise page.
Quote requests
Homeowners can use our free quote request form. We read each request and share it with up to 3 local companies from our listings for that town, so they can contact the homeowner. Nothing is sent to a company automatically. How we handle the information is explained in our privacy policy.
Corrections
Spotted something out of date or wrong? Please contact us and include the page and a source. Each guide shows when it was last updated.