A Guide to Garden Landscaping Costs
This Guide to Garden Landscaping Costs discusses the costs associated with landscaping your garden.
Landscaping your garden is similar to purchasing a new car. With a new car there is often a base model with options: more passenger and driver comfort and toys offered in different levels of luxury, different colour of car and finishes that will affect the price and obviously engine size. the more options, the higher the specification the higher the purchase cost of the car.
It is the same for gardens.
Let assume for a garden the base model would generally be a terrace, lawn and flower borders. The type of terrace will affect price is it a patio or deck. Is the patio natural stone or luxury porcleain. What size is the terrace? What shape is the terrace?
Also, what size is the lawn? Do you want lawn edging?
And what size is the flower borders? Do you want more mature plants for an instant visual impact? Do you want some trees?
All these elements will affect the base model price and that before any optional extras;
Outdoor kitchens
Pergolas
Studio / office buildings
Sheds, Green houses and storage units
Children’s play equipment
Lighting
Irrigation
Hot tub, jacuzzi, swim spa or swimming pool
and the list can go on.
A Guide to Landscaping Costs
With all these options, as well as the complexities of specification options within options it is very difficult to give a specific price.
To get a feeling of costs associated with landscaping your garden, you should look at the investment based upon your property value and a typical costs per meter squared (m2) for various levels of garden. Additionally, we have created individual Cost Guides for particular elements of your garden to help.
Garden Investment Guide
As a general guide for the Garden Investment Cost is specified as 5 to 10% of the property value.
A Caution: This investment estimation is for a typical garden. Luxury elements like outdoor kitchens, hot tub, studio/office building, swimming pools etc will significantly increase the cost by multiples of 2 or 3 times.
Garden Investment Guide
In reality, what does this mean in terms of actual cost?
To professionally landscape your garden as a guide to costs the following could be helpful.
Mid Range Garden: with a balance of a good quality patio, nice lawn and some simple planting.
Estimate: £200 to £250 /m2
High-End Garden: with a lovely design, high-quality materials, creative hard landscaping, good lawn and extensive planting and some features like water elements, outdoor lighting.
Estimate: £350 to £475 / m2
Luxury Garden: With a creative design, premium materials, multiple features like Jacuzzi, outdoor kitchens, high-end lighting, and irrigation systems.
Estimate: £475 to £750 and more / m2
The above is based upon typical projects we have constructed in the past.
Additional Considerations
There are numerous additional elements that can increase the costs of your garden landscaping;
No driveway - a property without off street parking for skips and materials will increase the costs of the project.
Access to the garden - the minimum flat access width required is 0.9m to allow materials to be moved in, in wheelbarrows but also a mini digger for excavation. This access should be slope and slope free. If access is tricky for example over steps, through a garage, steep, a long distance between front and back gardens, there will be an increase in costs. Access through the house will significantly increase costs and recommended is avoided.
Terracing - changing levels and terracing a garden, including the construction of retaining walls, will increase costs for labour, plant hire and waste disposal.
Complicated designs - Complicated designs, shapes, structures, patterns, curves and detailing will slow the construction productivity. As the construction will take longer, which often increases the labour costs independent of the material costs.
and many more…
Aftercare Costs
Regularly and maintenance costs need to be considered.
Will you do all the maintenance yourself?
or employ a company or individual to maintain your garden?
or a mixture of both?
We do offer our clients Aftercare Services at £525 per man day plus any material costs. We recommend 3 visits a year - tasks can be defined by you but as an example to clean your paving, oil or paint woodwork, tidy and prune border plants, apply lawn treatments.
