Weird question, but I can't find the answer anywhere. What do you call the people who cut the grass in public, city-owned places? Like, along the roads and places like that?
This might depend on location and whether it's a private company or a government-employed company. I've heard 'right-of-way mowing' and 'grounds maintenance' on different occasions.
Groundskeepers, though that usually refers to private property, not public, at least in the US. Lawn maintenance contractors maybe.
I call them 'the mower guys' or 'the state mower guys' if they're mowing the side of the highway. If they're cutting my lawn, then they're 'my mower guys'.
Here's a few answers from Yahoo! Answers: Most major highways are the responsibility of the State Highway Department. It could also be the City or County, for local highways. The city takes care of the highway grass usually with work release inmates from the local prison The state highway department.But with all the cutbacks I have noticed that in my state it has been subbed out to private lawn maintenance companies.This may not be the case in your area. These answers are from like a decade ago. I usually see what I take to be large scale contractors who I think do a lot of work besides mowing, like pick up trash etc.
I like the ones who are on those giant Segway mowers, swishing left, right, doing figure eights. It's like they're ice skating down the roadside.
I wouldn't call them landscapers because that denotes the moving of earth and the installation of flagstone paths and koi ponds. I would call them "the guys mowing the cemetery" or the "park lawn mower guys." The actual job title is probably municipal groundskeeper or something like that.
last year I saw one driving a Bobcat pushing a huge industrial mower deck, double-wide. He cut through a field of head-high weeds like nothing. Like this: (But with much taller weeds)