How much does landscaping cost?

1. How long is a piece of string? *
2. What came first the chicken or the egg? **
3. How much will it cost to landscape my property? ***

All three are very tough questions to answer, so let’s start with No. 3.

The cost of your landscape project will vary significantly depending on a number of different factors. Size and complexity of the project, site access, level of construction elements, type and maturity of plants and the intensity of labour required. If you are working with a smaller budget you can still achieve your desired outcome by minimising the construction elements, completing the project in stages and choosing immature plants.

So what will the construction costs be? What might be involved?

Site preparation – removal of existing structures and hard surfaces, tree and shrub removal, bin hire and tip fees, excavation for new levels possibly bobcat or excavator hire and manual labour.

Hard surfaces – paving materials from second hand red brick, concrete pavers, sandstone, granite or bluestone and everything in between. What base, concrete or crushed rock, mortar bed or sand bed?  Grid, ashlar, random, herringbone what pattern? Concrete surfaces, exposed aggregate, coloured, honed?

Retaining walls – Masonry walls, brick finish, rendered or clad in stone. Dry stone walls or sleepers with steel uprights or sleeper uprights?

Decking – what timber Spotted Gum, Ironbark, treated pine, and many more. How wide 90-140-190mm, how to fix it nails or screws?

Water feature – prefabbed, liner, fibreglassed or waterproof paint? Bio filters, UV clarifier, pumps and features.

Irrigation – in-line dripper, sprays, pop-ups, PVC or poly pipe? Automatic controller or manual operation?

Planting – plant sizes, smaller now and watch it grow or mature plants for instant effect or maybe a combination of the two?

Permits – Council permits, engineering reports, warranty insurance.
And that’s just scratching the surface of the many varied aspects of landscape construction!

Now back to the beginning, if you can start with a good design and specifications your off to a good start. It’s very difficult to put a price on landscape construction, so do some research, know what you want and you’ll have a landscape for life.

* As long as it needs to be
** The chicken
*** The sky's the limit