Garden Landscaping – Top Tip For Saving Money

Landscape Gardening – Patio building on a budget

You’ve just moved into a new house, you’ve been putting off designing and landscaping your garden but can not last another year with it the way it is. You probably have lots of ideas and have done a calculation on how much it is all going to cost which if the winter wasn’t depressing enough the cost of your new garden is. However you can get the garden you want by utilising the myriad of alternative landscaping options available to you. You may have to compromise on a few material choices but after all, what’s better, to have a landscaped garden now to enjoy this summer or keep putting it off and then when we have that record breaking summer and autumn and regret that you spent the whole summer around your friends & neighbours because you were too embarrased to ask them to your garden for a BBQ.

Firstly, if you do not have have a good knowledge of garden landscaping then you should seriously consider using the services of a garden designer. Although you will have to pay for a garden design drawing you will have the peace of mind knowing that you will have an estimate of how much the finished garden will cost. Also if you tell a designer from the start what your budget is they will design to that budget, it makes sense at this point to find a designer that also carrys out or has expierience in landscaping work as when they are in the design stage, producing the scale drawing for you they will have your budget in mind. Remember too, a professional designed garden drawing will be to scale, normally 1:50 (depending on your size of garden) and should include any relevant construction drawings so you can use this drawing to get quotations from various garden landscapers or even carry out some of the work yourself to save money.

Landscaping materials are relatively cheap in comparison to other materials you may buy for inside your house, where the real expense happens in landscaping is labour and removing any debris, soil etc to roadside skips. In 3 years the price of a skip has risen by up to 50% due to rising landfill costs. If you live in a city then your probably unlucky enough not to have side or rear access to your garden, so any excavated waste will have to be individually bagged and carefully taken through the house, thus adding greatly to time and labour costs. A good solution to this problem is by raising areas rather than excavating them, for example, if you are putting a new patio area down, rather than dig out the soil approx 15-20 cm needed for the whole area of your new patio (10cm needed for foundations, 5 cm for the mortar bed plus the depth of the paver) consider raising the new patio instead, this is not always possible if the patio is adjacent to the house because of damp issues and water run off but if the new patio is located away from the house there is no reason why you can not. By raising the height of your your patio you will save considerable money by minimilising labour and refuse costs. Another cost saving tip is if you are breaking up another patio or concrete area, use this material as the foundations for your new patio or any other project you have going on in the garden,remember the more waste that has to leave the property the more money will leave your pocket. Also you can be proud of yourself for not adding to the ever increasing landfill and by recycling what you have, good for the environment and good for the budget. Garden landscaping does not have to be hideously expensive, just plenty of thought and a good imagination will go a long way in providing you with an attractive, fully functional garden all at the price you need.