Landscape gardening quote received

[EnormousGinplease]

We’ve received an approx quote for a redesign of our garden which is on the smaller size. The gardener said his work starts at £25,000. We’ve paid £375 for a design sketch. The first draft was awful, the second much better but he’s only sent the second over in an email .. said he was too busy to get to the printers. This is ringing alarm bells already as I think he is already trying to save cost of printing again. Is this quote about average . We have lived in lots of different places and never had a particularly nice garden before but can now. Despite contacting others this gardener was the only one to get back to me.

We have a fairly small garden and recently had it done. Got decking, artificial grass and paving. This involved diggers and levelling etc....
A couple of quotes came back around the £12-15k mark but we got several around the £4-6k mark. I figured the higher quotes were folk that maybe just didn't want the business so were pricing themselves out. In the end up we paid £5K.
We have a couple of friends who have had significant works to their gardens and it cost around £15k. So your quote sounds quite substantial and I defo wouldn't go with it until you get others in.
Its worth holding out until you get at least 4 quotes. Prices and demand have been crazy over the last year.

Way too high. Park this, ask for recommendations locally, and get at least three other quotes.

Thank you .. I felt it was too high but having no experience wasn’t really sure. I emailed today asking for the plans to be printed out for us. I need a proper draft to show to other gardeners.

Um how can folks say it’s too high when the op has not given any detail at all about what’s involved.

Op, can you explain what is involved in the quote please and the current condition of your garden.

By any standards it's high for a small garden unless they want something extremely luxe.

Either way, it's got to make sense to get other quotes for comparison to put it in proper perspective.

I think it's a bit cheeky to ask the person for print outs if you are not going to go with him.

@Luckingfovely

By any standards it's high for a small garden unless they want something extremely luxe.

Either way, it's got to make sense to get other quotes for comparison to put it in proper perspective.

She said it was on the smaller side. She’s not said the size, for all we know she wants the whole thing digging over, a patio, gazebo, borders, turfed, stocked etc,

It may well be high, but there’s no way to tell from this.

We had our garden recently done. Decking borders, levelled put lawn, turf put down. Cost just over £2k, done in 1.5 days
South West London area.

£25k sounds like a mental price to pay, unless your garden is ridiculously large.

we had our garden landscaped two years ago, it's a fairly small garden but needed levelling, a patio at both ends and a pond. It cost us around £10k bunwent up to £11k as we chose to have fake grass which I bloody lovely it looks neat and tidy and is easy to maintain

Most of the cost was labour tand it took 2-3 workers at9und 8 days

Thats crazy pricing. I am having my garden done and got a fair few quotes in. I am having artificial lawn, front and back (front lawn is tiny), a nation area which is quite large and some fencing and a new gate. I'm paying about 6.5k which I think is realistic.

Patio area that should say, I have no idea what a nation area is !!

That sounds really high for a small garden. We got several quotes when we had ours done and it was easy to tell the ones who didn’t really want the work and so took ages with quotes and then they were double the company we went with. I’d shop around a bit more.

@TimetohittheroadJack

I think it's a bit cheeky to ask the person for print outs if you are not going to go with him.

Presumably that's one of the reasons he charges for a design. There will be some customers who want a design they will then execute themselves with no outside input. If his design were free then that would be a different matter.

Sorry I didn't see that he charged for the design! In that case then yes, of course you should get it.

The garden is approx 200 sq metres, a rough L shape. A large tree will be removed. A pathway through the middle to a new circular patio/ seating/ eating area. On the right side of the path will be a lawned area with screening around the oil tank. On the left side a much smaller patio area outside the living room doors. Leading onto a smaller circular lawn. Planting around part of the smaller lawn and a new larger bed down the side of the house. A vertical screening type thing at the entrance to the garden as currently the world and his wife can walk past and stare straight in.

Really your quote depends on how expensive your patios are going to be, and what your screening consists of. If you're choosing mature trees, high quality stone, then it's going to add up.

So two patio areas, two lams, screening (mature trees?), the cost of planting, the labour time involved, because that's a huge job.

Two lawns, sorry have had wine

£375 for the design work sounds on the low side for that size of space. That does sound quite pricey for the build - but a lot depends on the materials you are using and the amount of hard landscaping and mature plants involved.

We spent more on a 10m x 6m section of our garden - but that involved probably 20m of dry stone walls by someone who builds walls on Chelsea show gardens, Yew domes of 2m diameter, and a large slate sphere fountain...

However the product was worth the investment. What we did right was research ~20 local garden designers, shortlist 5, 3 of whom visited and two we paid to draw designs. The product of one, a member of the Society of Garden Designers was way better than that from the other - even though both talked a good game on their visits. We then used a landscaper to do the build, alongside the wall builder, and the garden designer completed the planting at the end using plants from a nursery he trusted.

Unless the design is really simple, I wouldn't have the landscaper do my design, or unless the landscaping is really simple the designer do my build.

@TimetohittheroadJack

I think it's a bit cheeky to ask the person for print outs if you are not going to go with him.

She's paid a design fee which includes print outs I presume?

@rosiedeus

So two patio areas, two lams, screening (mature trees?), the cost of planting, the labour time involved, because that's a huge job.

Yup. And there is the clearing of it as it stands now. The amount of work is why it’s so high. Just taking the tree and roots out is likely to be over a grand.