How much does landscaping cost? New lawn etc...

[maidamess]

'Landscaping' sounds an overly grandiose term for my garden of 20 foot by 35 foot!

But its a tip since the builders went, big bare patches on the lawn which is terribly uneven and slopey, skanky borders with nothing remotely attractive growing in them.
My son also decided to dig a crater in the centre .

Has anyone ever had their garden done proffessionally? I don't want Chelsea standard, just typical nice garden. How much approx does it cost?

bumping for ladies who have been in their gardens all day.....

I had a gardener at my house for over 2 months, levelling it out (7 skips worth), putting sleepers in, and building steps and storage boxes.

Cost about 6k - I'll try to put the garden pics on my profile.

Thnks Margo! Your garden looks great. I want mine all neat and slick like that. Was hoping it was more the £2k mark though...I wonder if any horticultural students would do it as a project?

Where are you maid? We are getting ours done in two weeks time...having a tier levelled out, lawn extended over existing steps, new fence etc...came in at just over £5k..but that does involve a digger coming in to level out the tier, skip etc...

I'm in Kingston. Where you?

Bristol...was going to say if we were in the same area, I'd pass the number of our landscaper on! The majority of our expense is coming from the tier levelling and the new fence...re-turfing and tidying it all up is the cheaper aspect iyswim?

We've just had gardeners in as well albeit my dp's brother's company. They charge £350 per day plus VAT (for a 2 man team). To give you an idea, it took them a day to pull up our large concrete patio & path, a day for the digger (360) to level everything, take out old borders then rotivate ground. Preparing for the new lawn was nearly a day but laying it only a few hours (and turf is very cheap!). Got to take into account hiring the digger if you need one (I think ours was over £100), skips (a big one is £160 round here & we had 2 plus a diddy one at the end) not to mention plants which if you want to fill the new beds fast will cost you perhaps another £1K. We've just spent £400 on plants (with discounts!) and not made much of a dent.

It's important that the levels are right, so really need somebody who knows what they're doing. It's also not necessarily cost efficient to do it in stages despite what I thought originally. If you want a path next to the lawn, edges need to be right, hard to do that on two phases really. Putting a wall or steps in will always cost more because it's a time consuming job. I've found it quite an education - we planned a curved path using sandstone (which is beautiful) but of course dozens of stones needed to be handcut which probably added a day to the job! Doing a curved path with block paving would have been a lot simpler and cheaper.

I haven't been brave enough to ask dp how much final bill came to yet!

...had my 30 x 40 garden cleared in March. Half lawned, half to deck plus small patio and path to the side. 40' of new strong fencing built, too. Took three blokes a week, and cost £4.5 k.

...'twas a job desperately in need of doing, though (I know decks are vulgar. But the trampoline fits on it, and it does not appear to require mowing...)

We were £800 just for a lawn.

Gor blimey, I'd better start saving up....

We were thinking of moving to a bigger house with a flat lawn etc but with the credit crunch, decided it would be cheaper to improve instead. Apparently a lot of people are doing the same thing and loads of the landscapers are booked solid (one bloke was booked until Oct!!) so get in quick to get booked and save while you wait!

maidamess- am a hort student... well landscape design student. I sure if you could find a student they would be more than happy to do some work for you... If you have any colleges are you doing courses in landscape design you could perhaps suggest they could use your garden as a project?

ooh charlotte, now you're talking!

Would it be considerably cheaper going down that route?

I don't want anything too fancy pants...I have 3 kids and a rabbit so I shant be troubling the judges at the RHS.

I'm starting a BTEC Horticulture course in September and at my interview the tutor said they do an end of term project in the "real" world... might be worth contacting your local colleges...

I've been in the industry for years and for me personally completely worth the cost to landscape a garden. It completely depends on the size of the garden and what you want to do with the redesign. This post is for the anyone thinking of using a landscaper.

I've worked myself and with other groups over the years and when working with a company called PBL in Glasgow - we had the best feedback, in terms of quality and cost. They work nationwide as their ever expanding. If you're looking for a cost effective team then look no further than them:

www.priorybridgelandscaping.co.uk/

I wish you good luck in your garden quest.