Garden overhaul advice/costs

[Spuddybean]

Hi All

We have a small garden which is a mess. There is a rough 'lawn'. It has patches of uneven grass, tree stumps and random paving.

The whole thing either needs levelling/rotivating and returfing. Or as we'd rather some low maintenance decking. We need trellis fencing all round and a shed.

The garden is about 28 square metres. We are going to get quotes - does anyone have any ideas on what we can be expect to be charged?

Thanks

Our grass sounds very similar to yours. Just asked DH our measurements & he says ours is 70 square meters. We are having it taken up & returfed in a few weeks and are paying £650. So yours may be about £400? - as for the shed we bought a plastic one last month from B & Q for £320 which was reasonably easy to put together.
Not sure about fencing though.
BTW we used a website called 'rated people', & the tradesmen all contacted us to give us a quote & we found it a real no hassle way of getting a job done that we'd been putting off for the last 16 years!

I wouldn't returf if you are going to be in a hosepipe ban area personally, leave it until the Autumn.

We'd much rather decking tbh (although i personally prefer grass) because we are expecting a baby in the summer and DP refuses to do any gardening so i doubt i'll be trotting around with a lawn mower. Also we are planning to move away and rent out the house, so want something low maintenance for tenants.

I had a garden designer sort me out a layout for mine. It wasn't costly but the result is really lovely. She sorted out the contractors to do the actual heavy work too.

All the websites reckon you should spend about 10% of your house's value . Mine came in at about 1%, i.e. a small number of thousands for everything.

10 per cent of house value... Just as well I do all the work myself.

I have been taming a huge overgrown garden. I'm small and feeble but it's amazing how much you can do with proper tools and a pick axe.

Don't do hard landscaping, I had a garden like that and found it really inconvenient with a young baby and worse with a toddler. Decking is very slippery when wet, so beware...

If low maintenance for tenant, do a bit of grass then get somebody to build a shallowish box (basically four pieces of wood that form a shape, not as high as raised bed though) and pour in tiny pebbles, continental style... Or have a bit of paving. I had railway sleepers and pebbles on one side and it was very nice - not so nice with young child, though!

Cheers all. We certainly don't have 10% of our house 'value' to spend on the garden - DP is saying no to 2k and that he doesn't want to go over 1k really (which i know is unrealistic).

No to stones - i like walking bare foot and the baby may eat them! We have a patio area which is paved already so i don't want any more paving. I also forgot how slippy decking got...hmmm. Maybe we'll go for lawn then (i do love the feeling of grass on my bare feet and i know it's better for the environment).

Thanks everyone.