This decent quote for Landscaper

Irish Gunner

Okay moved into house since start of all this

Tried maintaining garden as good as we could.

So got recommended a landscaper. Nice person and gave us good advice. Came back with the below quote.


Back garden:
New planting, tidy up of beds, dress beds with bark mulch, all waste removed plus labour.

Total €990 (ex VAT)

Front garden tidy up €150 (ex VAT) if done with back garden.

Picture of back garden below

https://photos.app.goo.gl/yLPpKhhRihVhM1r9A

https://photos.app.goo.gl/bDjEKgpMoGeudEcEA

Front garden smaller but just clean up.

Have not got another quote(thank you lock down) just wondering how this price compares

We don't have any budget and expected price to be close to €1k This person was recommended and difficult to get another landscaper to give us a quote

Any thoughts, input let me know.

Cheers

Reckless Abandonment

All depends on how much new planting is been done. Are you looking to remove all existing plants ?

Irish Gunner

Reckless Abandonment wrote: »

All depends on how much new planting is been done. Are you looking to remove all existing plants ?

Keeping some but getting rid of most of them and soil replaced

Just replacing it with easy to maintain plants and get rid of all the weeds etc

It was Miss Gunner whom did most of the talking and wants low maintenance on the garden not me

Reckless Abandonment

General rule i go by is labour is twice the cost of materials. So if your getting 300 odd euro of plants and soil etc then its a fair price. Personally it looks a fairly easy job for yourself to do. ( not telling you what to do )

1000e and and a trip to the garden center would go a long way there.
You'd be mad to pay someone to do that work.
especially this time of year.
It'll look the same after one night of wind!

magicbastarder

did they give any indication of how long the job would take? you could ask for an hourly/daily rate.

Irish Gunner

Thanks for the replies

Yeah could do it our self but both working during the week and weekend try to do things with the family that is except gardening :P

No breakdown of labour etc just a text of the cost and no plants that are

I know its probably easy money but our aim is to just get it sorted and then maintain it ourselves .The picture was not like that before we moved in a lot of digging and chainsaw cutting with the good weather.

i know everyone has time now but its the patience that kill us and rather get a job done properly rather than have it like Homer building a BBQ;)

Reckless Abandonment

All of your plants look healthy to be honest. I'd just buy a few more and 6/8 bags of bark chippings small bit of weeding and your done. 200 quid max. Unless your going for a complete overall I wouldn't be bothering with a landscaper .

Irish Gunner

Reckless Abandonment wrote: »

All of your plants look healthy to be honest. I'd just buy a few more and 6/8 bags of bark chippings small bit of weeding and your done. 200 quid max. Unless your going for a complete overall I wouldn't be bothering with a landscaper .

Yeah going for a complete overhaul getting rid of most its the labour we seem to be paying more for at a guess

looksee

It looks tidy and low maintenance at the moment, what are you hoping to achieve by having someone come in and disturb it? You could gradually take out a few of the conifer shrubs and replace with something a bit more colourful, but then you are introducing things that will drop leaves, and while they are small weeds will grow round them. If they were going to do a serious re-design then that figure would not be enough, but it looks like too much for a very basic job.

Can you be a bit more specific than just 'low maintenance'? Short of paving it you will not get much more low maintenance than you have.

The amazing makeovers you see on tv programmes are often maintenance nightmares if you know what you are looking at.

ellee

To really know if you're getting a fair price or not, you'd need to know what the new planting is and then double check the cost of that yourself.

I suspect though that it will need just as much maintaining as what you have! Everything needs some care in the end. The new planting might be nicer though? Those evergreens are quite dull really even if they are low maintenance. They look too big for the beds also, but maybe they are small varieties?

For contrast, I had someone spend a morning clearing ivy away from my back wall and they only charged me €120. Took it away as well. Took all the pruning I'd done separately myself away also.

If you are ouching at the price a bit you could pull some of it out yourself and then just get them to come and do the planting and take away the old plants/shrubs you pulled out.

On the other hand, if you really don't want to do it and are happy to pay sure go for it. Your time is precious!

ellee

looksee wrote: »

The amazing makeovers you see on tv programmes are often maintenance nightmares if you know what you are looking at.

I often wonder what they look like a few years later. :rolleyes: I still watch them though!

That's nothing a few hours wouldn't do and then you could take a break with the family next year with the savings.

frecklier

I think it sounds very reasonable for the size of the garden.

Uncle Pierre

Just for a different sort of perspective, but it's an apples and oranges type of situation, as I'm in a rural area myself with a large site - approx 1 acre, with approx 3/4 acre lawn and assorted large-ish flower beds/shrubberies. Larger than anything in those pictures anyway.

I'm a "low maintenance" sort of fella myself, and I consider ours to be low maintenance, as it's just somewhere around 90 minutes to mow the grass and maybe another hour a week at various different jobs in rotation (could be weeding one week, strimming the next, etc.)

I'd already consider the OP's garden to be extremely low maintenance by comparison. Would guess you could mow that much grass in about 20 minutes, do the edges in five minutes, and weed all the beds in about 30?

I certainly wouldn't be spending €1,000 on it. Maybe spend it on a nice set of patio furniture or something like that instead?

Then again...apples and oranges

Irish Gunner

Yes one man's trash is another man's treasure, apples v oranges and all other Idioms.

The Grass I can do that I have been mowing it once a week and seeded it and its getting there.

The rest, maybe we are just a bit lazy and willing to do so much. We have dug up weeds and there are still some there. It was like Welcome to the Jungle when we moved in I think Axel Rose may have been a previous owner.

We don't want Diarmuid Gavin to pay a visit and we are not lets keep up with the Jones etc .Just want something nice.

We need to replace the patio as puddles building and previous owners just painted over it so weeds coming up there. It was worse when we moved in.

Yeah if we lock up the kids and get deep down and dirty we could manage it but its Time and Energy. Some we have but want it all done in one foul swoop then look what we will do with the patio and what we can afford.

Yeah I know Hurricane Neddy can come along and pull everything up but we are going to maybe ask for a detailed price cost so we can see what's been done.

Cheers for all the replies food for thought.

Not sure a landscaper is really required for this as there is no real landscaping involved, just tidying and planting. It looks good and low maintenance to me already so I'd be interested to see what he'll plant to reduce toll on you - maybe just lots of evergreen shrubs and grasses. Possibly a weed barrier under the mulch? Anyway, if you had half a day at the weekend, between two people you'd get to the garden centre and have that work done for a fraction of the cost.

Irish Gunner

Deleted User wrote: »

Not sure a landscaper is really required for this as there is no real landscaping involved, just tidying and planting. It looks good and low maintenance to me already so I'd be interested to see what he'll plant to reduce toll on you - maybe just lots of evergreen shrubs and grasses. Possibly a weed barrier under the mulch? Anyway, if you had half a day at the weekend, between two people you'd get to the garden centre and have that work done for a fraction of the cost.

Yes if we where both younger and fitter it would be but unfortunately we are neither of them:(

We want more colour and will see what we are getting as part of this cost and maybe get another quote once the Madness is over and I don't mean the band;)