Landscaping In Springvale

Day rates get quoted around $400 to $700 for a two-person team plus materials, but we generally do not price landscaping that way and neither should you. Charging by the day means the price goes up if the job takes longer, and you carry that risk rather than the builder. MG Landscaping prices by measurement instead - per square metre for concrete, paving, turf and decking, per square metre of wall face for retaining. Every job is unique, so you get one fixed written figure before any work starts, and a slow week is our problem rather than your bill.

The usual split is softscaping, hardscaping, structures and services. Softscaping covers everything living - topsoil, turf, garden beds, hedging and screening plants. Hardscaping covers built surfaces such as paving, concrete, retaining walls, steps and edging. Structures covers decks, pergolas and screens, and services covers the invisible layer of drainage, irrigation and outdoor lighting. Most real backyards need at least three of the four, which is exactly why splitting the job across separate trades causes so much grief.

A single-element job like turf replacement or a patio is usually two to four days on site. A standard backyard combining retaining, a hard surface and new lawn typically runs two to three weeks, and a full front-and-back build on a new estate block is commonly four to eight weeks. Concrete adds waiting time that cannot be compressed - it needs about seven days before foot traffic and 28 days to reach full strength. Melbourne winters also cost days, because you cannot lay turf or pour concrete into a waterlogged site, and we would rather lose two days than build on mud.

Most planting, turf, paving and general garden work needs no permit at all. Permits come into it for structural and boundary work: retaining walls over one metre, decks more than 800 millimetres above ground, some pergolas depending on size and setback, and any new or widened vehicle crossover onto the street. Protected and significant trees are the other trigger, and councils such as Knox and Maroondah take their tree controls seriously across Ferntree Gully, Wantirna South and Ringwood. We check all of this at quoting stage and tell you what applies to your block before you spend anything.

Landscaping is genuinely disruptive for the first few days and it is better that you know that upfront. Excavation, soil removal and crushed rock deliveries are the messy part, and if the only access is down the side of the house there will be barrow traffic past your back door. We set up ground protection over surfaces we are keeping, keep spoil in one place rather than spread across the yard, and clean up at the end of each day rather than only at the end of the job. Water and access to the yard are what we need from you, and we will tell you which days it is worth being out of the house.

One build is cheaper per square metre because you pay for site setup, machinery and deliveries once, and the drainage works as a single designed system. Staging suits a tighter budget and lets you live with one area before committing to the next. If you stage it, get the full design done first and build against that plan, so levels and drainage are still designed as one thing. Building area by area with no overall plan is the version that costs the most in the end, because something usually has to come back out.