How Much Should You Expect To Pay For Landscaping

There is a difference between what landscaping costs and what you should expect to pay. The first is a number somebody else arrived at on a different property. The second is something you can work out for your own site, then defend when the quotes arrive.

This guide covers how to build a realistic expectation from your own site conditions, how to read what comes back, and what protections you have when you sign.

Build Your Number From Your Site, Not From An Average

The most common mistake is starting with a figure found online and then being surprised by the quotes.

Asking how much does landscaping cost in the abstract gets you nowhere, because published average landscaping costs are driven by other people's sites. Before you set a landscaping budget, establish which four factors affect landscaping costs most on your property. A good landscaping budget starts here rather than with a number from a search result.

How much level change there is. Slope brings earthworks and structural elements, and those consume budget before anything is visible. Sloped blocks are the single biggest reason two otherwise similar jobs diverge.

Whether machinery can reach the work area. If a bobcat and earthworks contractor can get there, material handling is cheap. With difficult access, everything goes down a side path by wheelbarrow, the same materials take two or three times as long to place, and spoil takes just as long to get out.

What your soil is. On the Swan Coastal Plain, the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation describes most soils as sandy with very little clay, iron minerals or organic matter to hold nutrients, and the Water Corporation notes they are also water repellent. Soil preparation is a real cost line. Heavy clay has the opposite problem and needs drainage rather than amendment.

How much of the outdoor space will be built rather than planted. Hard surfaces cost considerably more per square metre than planting, so the ratio largely sets your total cost. Material costs and installation costs both scale with built area, not with the size of the block.

Answer those four and you can have a sensible conversation about price. Skip them and you are guessing.

How Much Of The Budget Goes Where

A full landscaping project is a bundle of separate jobs. Knowing which apply to you is more useful than any headline figure, and it explains why quotes vary greatly depending on scope.

Landscape design comes first, whether a consultation or a full documentation package, and our guide to landscape designer fees sets out the four ways landscape design fees are charged. Then demolition of an existing garden, site clearing and green waste removal, which an empty backyard on a new build skips. Then earthworks and level changes. Then retaining wall construction, often the largest single line on a sloping site. Then drainage, invisible and not optional.

Then hard surfaces: paving and hardscaping, paths, concrete driveways, steps, and a deck in treated pine, hardwood or composite decking, where our decking cost guide covers the spread. Then soil improvement.

Then softscaping: instant turf and lawn or artificial turf, a garden bed or two, mulch and garden beds, and plant selection. Backyard landscaping on a new build follows the same order.

Then irrigation systems. Then garden lighting, since you cannot install lighting after the paving without cutting it. Electrical work must be done by a licensed electrician. Then features such as water features, an outdoor kitchen for outdoor entertaining, or a fire pit.

Hard landscaping usually takes the larger share of the budget. The often-quoted split of roughly half to two thirds is a planning convention rather than measured data, but the direction holds, and it tells you where to look when a quote comes back high, which is the whole subject of why landscaping quotes vary so much.