Do You Know Your Landscaping Budget?
Homeowners contact our team daily with their dreams for improved landscaping or outdoor living features. But, often, they have no concept of their budget simply because they don’t know a reasonable cost expectation.
Part of doing our job the Weller Brothers Way includes making an extra effort to educate our clients and being transparent about how we price our products and services. We value the time of both our clients and our designers and for that reason, we strive to be upfront about landscaping costs.
Which Type of Homeowner Are You?
We frequently meet with two types of homeowners with misunderstandings regarding the cost of landscaping:
1. They Know What Their Budget Is
This homeowner comes to Weller Brothers with landscaping dreams – perhaps a new patio with an outdoor kitchen and surrounding softscapes – but with unrealistic investment expectations.
“We’d love to have a backyard pool with surrounding pavers and softscapes, and maybe even a firepit. Our budget for this is $50,000.”
While this budget is nothing to scoff at, we’ll need to nix the pool to make it happen and encourage the client to prioritize their desired features to accommodate the budget.
These conversations are always a bummer for both the client and our team. For this reason, we do our best to share our landscape budget guide online and in our initial client onboarding process to manage expectations and goals early in the relationship.
2. They Know What Their Budget Isn’t
“We don’t really have a budget in mind” or “We have no clue what’s reasonable,” is something we commonly hear from homeowners. “But here is what we want.”
Without a baseline budget to guide the way, we might spend time drafting a landscape design with the client’s desired features, often to be met with “Well, that’s more than we thought it would be. That isn’t within our budget.”
Back to the drawing board.
If you know that you would spend, for example, $25,000 to $75,000, but you know that you won’t spend $80,000, let us know! While that wide range of available budget may not seem to provide our designers much direction, it gives us something to work with and could eliminate the potential for multiple revisions (which saves you money).
So, if you meet with a Weller Brothers landscape designer who asks, “Would you spend $50,000? Would you spend $80,000? Would you spend $150,000?” know that they aren’t trying to manipulate you into spending more.
They are identifying what your landscaping budget isn’t.
How We Work Within Your Budget
While some landscaping features may simply be out of the question for some price points (for example, a custom masonry outdoor kitchen on a $15,000 budget), our design team will work with you to manage costs as much as possible.
Here are some examples of features we can adjust to help manage your budget:
We have many options across various price points for wall materials – between field boulders, manufactured block, or decorative block.
We source our pavers from a few different manufacturers, including Belgard, Unilock, and Techo-Bloc. Within these brands, there are many options for paver style, size, and materials. We can consider all of these options to help offset costs as needed.
Your backyard pool design provides many opportunities for cost efficiency. To give you an idea, a pool could range anywhere from $180,000 (no features or landscaping around the pool) to upwards of half a million dollars (including custom designs, lights, jets, slides or diving boards, and more.)
There are also price ranges between fiberglass (lower cost) and concrete pools (higher cost).
Similar to your pool, we have a lot of room for adjustment with outdoor kitchens. A baseline outdoor kitchen is a simple kit kitchen that may include a countertop and a grill.
Conversely, your fully customized stone veneer kitchen with accessories like a kegerator, pizza oven, or sink will require greater investment.
Here are some ideas to consider for your outdoor kitchen.
Going from a gas firepit to a wood-burning firepit is an easy cost-saving swap.
We can also discuss the materials for your firepit; for example, we can custom-build it from cinder blocks and stone veneer or purchase a firepit kit for a more cost-effective option.
We can manage the costs of your general landscaping, shrubs, trees, and plants by selecting smaller or different plants.
A common example is Boxwoods. They are popular in the Midwest but cost more as they take several years to grow. Instead, opt for Dogwoods, which have a quicker growth rate and are more cost-efficient.
Your Weller Brothers landscape designer will help you make cost-related material decisions that align with your priorities for your outdoor living space.
Also, you can trust that even if you go with the “cheapest” option for a feature, Weller Brothers still only sources high-quality materials for our clients and our landscaping projects in Sioux Falls, SD, Rochester, MN, and Des Moines, IA.
Let’s Align Expectations
We understand that if you don’t live and breathe landscaping like we do, it’s unlikely that you would have a realistic idea of the cost of landscaping features.
That’s exactly why we have created our landscape budget guide. We encourage you to consult this before you contact us. That way, you will be confident of your next steps in investing in your outdoor living space and we can create a high-quality, long-lasting landscape design within your budget — whatever it may be.
