What a Garden Actually Costs
Three real projects with real budgets, and where the money goes when it is not going on plants.
People are consistently surprised by which parts of a garden are expensive, and it is almost never the plants.
Hard Landscaping Is Most of It
Terracing, retaining walls, paving and steps typically take sixty to seventy percent of a build budget. The Combe Down garden on our work page cost forty-six thousand pounds, of which the dry-stone retaining alone was nineteen. The entire planting scheme was under seven.
Access Changes Everything
If a digger cannot reach the back garden, every tonne of spoil goes out through the house or over a wall by barrow. On a terraced street this can add several thousand pounds before a single plant arrives, and it is the number most often missing from optimistic quotes.
Plants Are the Cheap Part, Within Reason
A full border scheme for a town garden is usually two to four thousand pounds at nursery prices. The exception is instant maturity — a semi-mature multi-stem tree can be twelve hundred on its own, and three of them changes the shape of a budget quickly.
Where to Save
Buy hedging bare root in winter. Accept smaller plant sizes and wait two years. Phase the work across two seasons, doing the structure first. What not to save on is drainage and preparation, because those are the only things you genuinely cannot revisit later.