Landscape Budgeting

There are two competing philosophies around developing a plan and budget. One is “budget first”. This involves defining a budget and then designing the budget. The obvious advantage is that this planning process holds fewer financial surprises. It does have some disadvantages too. Most notably, it ignores your desires. If we design a landscape based solely on a dollar amount, we are forced to largely or completely ignore the requests and design to that fixed dollar amount.

Also, it does not consider anomalies that exist in different jobs. There is advice out in the world that says to budget a fixed percent (10%-25% is a common range depending on who is telling you) of the cost of the house for landscaping. That only works in a very finite set of situations and does not consider some important factors such as lot size, HOA requirements, site-specific requirements (things like steps and walls), and extras like play areas, patios, fire pits, and outdoor living features.

This brings us to the second philosophy, which we subscribe to at Accent Landscapes, which is to gather a wish list and vision for the project, pair it with design guideline requirements and site-specific situations, and meet this list and vision in a design first. Making sure we have addressed all your desires for a finished project, we then move forward to pricing. We see this as the starting point of the budget process. It is meant to provide you with a framework to start making decisions and put answers to some previous unknowns.

Once you have the detailed pricing for your project, budgeting becomes a much more informed process. You are able to see the cost of everything you were looking for and make value-based assessments. From there, we can make revisions to the design based on the budget, and also explore the possibility of phasing in the things that don’t fit the budget today. We shy away from providing ballpark figures in the early stages of a project because in today’s world there are so many products, materials, and landscape components that vary wildly in cost that it is difficult to say “You can expect this amount” for any given component until the details and materials are selected and put into an overall scope of work. We have found that this process allows us to create a true custom landscape that fits both your needs and tastes.