Garden renovation - price advice

[Fromtherough]

Anyone any recent experience of paying for a garden renovation? Or are you a landscaper and able to give a ballpark estimate?

Before getting our dog my lawn was like Wembley, only with better stripes. It is now a muddy, patchy mess with the odd hole here and there.

Decided it’s time to renovate the whole garden. Arranging some quotes, so would be useful to know if anyone has had any recent works done so we can assess if they’re reasonable - or if we need to adapt our plans slightly.

I’m after:
- Around 40m2 of either outdoor porcelain or sandstone.
- Around 20m2 of composite decking.
- Around 100m2 of turf

Prices to include supply and labour. The garden is flat. At the minute it is predominantly laid to lawn (now mud) bar a small section of concrete paving outside the patio doors running the border of the house. I’m in the North East if that impacts on anything.

Any advice welcome!

 

[rudebhoy]

We had our garden done last year as it was a right mess

- lift old patio
- lay new slabs
- new fencing
- new decking
- tidy up lawn

We got a few quotes, didn't go for the cheapest, went for the ones who gave me the best gut feel. Paid around 7k.

took about 2 weeks, 2/3 man team. Looks really nice now.

 

[Fromtherough]

We had our garden done last year as it was a right mess

- lift old patio
- lay new slabs
- new fencing
- new decking
- tidy up lawn

We got a few quotes, didn't go for the cheapest, went for the ones who gave me the best gut feel. Paid around 7k.

took about 2 weeks, 2/3 man team. Looks really nice now.

Cheers for the input. Any idea on the split of the costs? I’m roughly working on the presumption of labour/materials split of 40/60. But that may be way off.

 

[rudebhoy]

Cheers for the input. Any idea on the split of the costs? I’m roughly working on the presumption of labour/materials split of 40/60. But that may be way off.

Not off the top of my head. I'll have a look to see if i can find the invoice.

 

[rudebhoy]

Found the original quote


Materials £3,009.37
Labour £3,250.00
Sub total £6,259.37
20% VAT £1,251.87
Total £7,511.24

can give you the line by line quote for materials if you really want it!

 

[Beezerk]

We had our garden done last year as it was a right mess

- lift old patio
- lay new slabs
- new fencing
- new decking
- tidy up lawn

We got a few quotes, didn't go for the cheapest, went for the ones who gave me the best gut feel. Paid around 7k.

took about 2 weeks, 2/3 man team. Looks really nice now.

Wasn’t Landscape Outlook was it?

 

[Fromtherough]

Found the original quote


Materials £3,009.37
Labour £3,250.00
Sub total £6,259.37
20% VAT £1,251.87
Total £7,511.24

can give you the line by line quote for materials if you really want it!

Cheers that split is really helpful.

 

[rudebhoy]

Wasn’t Landscape Outlook was it?

The firm? No it was a local Whitley Bay company.

 

[fundy]

Anyone any recent experience of paying for a garden renovation? Or are you a landscaper and able to give a ballpark estimate?

Before getting our dog my lawn was like Wembley, only with better stripes. It is now a muddy, patchy mess with the odd hole here and there.

Decided it’s time to renovate the whole garden. Arranging some quotes, so would be useful to know if anyone has had any recent works done so we can assess if they’re reasonable - or if we need to adapt our plans slightly.

I’m after:
- Around 40m2 of either outdoor porcelain or sandstone.
- Around 20m2 of composite decking.
- Around 100m2 of turf

Prices to include supply and labour. The garden is flat. At the minute it is predominantly laid to lawn (now mud) bar a small section of concrete paving outside the patio doors running the border of the house. I’m in the North East if that impacts on anything.

Any advice welcome!

Not sure on North East prices but been trying to get landscape quotes in the South East the last year and some are so ridiculous to be unbelievable!!

You can buy the actual paving for £30/m2 but close to doubling that price with other materials (incl digger assuming you need a properly dug out base) and then double it again for laying the patio, so for 40 m2 round here would be close to 5k (quotes Ive seen have gone higher than £200/m2)
Turf you can buy for £3-4/m2, add on topsoil/fertiliser to the material costs and we have had quotes in total for laid ranging from £10/m2 to £25/m/2 (to some degree this depends on how level what you have currently is and how much prep is going to be needed (ours shouldve been minimal but the weeds are taking over again )
Cant help on decking im afraid

We did have one quote where I asked if they had missed out the decimal point, that on all accounts is the easiest way to end a conversation with a potential landscaper lol. Hope you have more success than we are with it!

 

[larmen]

We paid about £7.5k as well for 20m2 porcelain and 60m2 of laid turf.
They quoted 2 weeks, took nearly 3.

We didn’t go for the cheapest quote but for the one who showed up in time, took proper notes before quoting, and I can get a 5 iron into his garden from our drive way.

 

[Pants]

This may be of interest, but it is a year old.

https://www.checkatrade.com/blog/cost-guides/garden-decking-cost-guide/

 

[Fromtherough]

Not sure on North East prices but been trying to get landscape quotes in the South East the last year and some are so ridiculous to be unbelievable!!

You can buy the actual paving for £30/m2 but close to doubling that price with other materials (incl digger assuming you need a properly dug out base) and then double it again for laying the patio, so for 40 m2 round here would be close to 5k (quotes Ive seen have gone higher than £200/m2)
Turf you can buy for £3-4/m2, add on topsoil/fertiliser to the material costs and we have had quotes in total for laid ranging from £10/m2 to £25/m/2 (to some degree this depends on how level what you have currently is and how much prep is going to be needed (ours shouldve been minimal but the weeds are taking over again )
Cant help on decking im afraid

We did have one quote where I asked if they had missed out the decimal point, that on all accounts is the easiest way to end a conversation with a potential landscaper lol. Hope you have more success than we are with it!

Strife. This is what I’m concerned with. Currently looking for a car for the wife and a lad at work said to budget the same for garden. I thought he was joking, but maybe not!

 

[Fromtherough]

We paid about £7.5k as well for 20m2 porcelain and 60m2 of laid turf.
They quoted 2 weeks, took nearly 3.

We didn’t go for the cheapest quote but for the one who showed up in time, took proper notes before quoting, and I can get a 5 iron into his garden from our drive way.

Don’t happen to know the split for the porcelain vs the turf do you? Aware they may have just provided an ‘all-in’ price.

 

[Fromtherough]

Anyone any experience of printed concrete? A neighbour has this as on their drive and it looks nice. Understand you can get a range of styles and finishes. Imagine less maintenance than patio/tiles but no idea on costs.

 

[Pants]

https://www.checkatrade.com/blog/cost-guides/imprinted-concrete-cost/

Seems to be a theme here

 

[Fromtherough]

We’ve now had a few quotes and wow some are eye watering. Huge variance in price and availability. Weirdly some of the ones with immediate availability are more expensive. We’ve opted for a landscaper that recently did our neighbours garden. Not the cheapest - but they’d done a stellar job for them.

 

[jusme]

Going to range from £7-10K

 

[GreiginFife]

I’m building a stacked sleeper planter for the in-laws today. 3.8m long and 0.6m wide 600mm deep. So basically 6 sleepers needed. Will take me about 2-3 hours. Sleepers and steel rods cost a total of £150.

Cheapest quote they got for the job was £1200. It’s getting silly now.

 

[BiMGuy]

I’m building a stacked sleeper planter for the in-laws today. 3.8m long and 0.6m wide 600mm deep. So basically 6 sleepers needed. Will take me about 2-3 hours. Sleepers and steel rods cost a total of £150.

Cheapest quote they got for the job was £1200. It’s getting silly now.

Where are you get your sleepers from? The price of them has gone crazy.

 

[GreiginFife]

Where are you get your sleepers from? The price of them has gone crazy.

Get them from a local builder merchant. £20 each (200mm x 100mm x 2400mm).

Steel rebar rods to fix the bottom row in place were only £5 each.

Local MGM yard want nearly £40 a sleeper. It’s nuts.