Decide what you actually want — and what it's honestly worth — before a salesperson decides for you. Pick your elements, choose a spec level, fit it to your budget, carve out the bits you'll DIY, and walk away with a brief you can hand to any tradesperson.
Quick answer: A whole-garden makeover in 2026 typically runs £3,000–£12,000 fitted depending on scope: a 25m² patio is £1,875–£4,500, a boundary of fencing £770–£1,900, a new 50m² lawn £500–£1,350 laid, a 15m² deck £975–£2,400. The planner below prices your exact mix at basic, good or luxury spec — and shows what phasing or DIY-ing parts would save.
Prices checked July 2026 · how we check them · how we work it out
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Prices checked July 2026 · how we check them · how we work it out
These are honest planning bands from the 2026 UK trade guides and retail prices behind our calculators — not quotes. Access, ground conditions, region and spec details move every job; the brief this builds is designed to get you accurate quotes, not to replace them.
Our figure is researched, but it is not your garden. Post the job free and local landscapers reply with real prices — the honest way to check the estimate above before you commit.
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| Element | Spec | DIY materials | Fitted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clearance (per m³) | Mostly green waste | £45–£65 | £60–£90 |
| Mixed waste | £55–£80 | £90–£120 | |
| Patio (per m²) | Budget concrete | £30–£55 | £75–£125 |
| Indian sandstone | £40–£85 | £85–£155 | |
| Porcelain | £55–£110 | £100–£180 | |
| Decking (per m²) | Softwood | £40–£75 | £65–£130 |
| Composite | £65–£105 | £85–£160 | |
| Fencing (per panel) | Lap, timber posts | £70–£110 | £110–£165 |
| Closeboard, concrete posts | £120–£160 | £200–£275 | |
| Real lawn (per m²) | Seed | £1–£2.50 | — |
| Turf, prepared bed | £5–£10 | £10–£27 | |
| Full rebuild + topsoil bed | £15–£35 | £25–£60 | |
| Artificial grass (per m²) | Mid-range 30–35mm | £20–£35 | £45–£70 |
| Driveway (per m²) | Gravel | £28–£52 | £40–£75 |
| Tarmac | — | £45–£100 | |
| Block paving / resin | £60–£90 | £90–£160 | |
| Raised beds (per bed) | Gravel-board bed | £150–£230 | — |
| Sleeper bed | £210–£320 | — | |
| Oak, double height | £330–£470 | — | |
| Planted borders (per m²) | Prepared & mulched | £5–£11 | £12–£25 |
Prices checked July 2026 (patio, decking and border fitted bands rechecked 30 July 2026) — the same researched bands that power each element's own calculator (linked in the first column for the full breakdown, quantities and buying guides). A fitted band is the materials band plus the published labour rate on that element's own page, so the two always add up. "—" means no honest benchmark exists for that route: raised beds have no reliable fitted rate (expect day-rate pricing), tarmac and seed aren't DIY/fitted jobs respectively.
Each element carries the price band from its own calculator page — researched July-2026 UK figures with sources logged, not made-up averages. The planner multiplies your size by the band for your chosen spec and route (fitted or DIY), then adds the elements you're doing now into one total. "Later" items and DIY jobs are listed separately, because a quote request should only contain the work you're actually asking someone to price.
The budget-fit suggestions are deterministic and honest, in this order: phase a nice-to-have (you lose nothing but time), switch a DIY-able element to DIY (you spend sweat instead of money — each one tells you what the sweat involves), and only then drop a spec tier (a real trade-off, and essentials are the last thing we suggest touching). Bands stay bands — we'll say a change "gets you roughly inside" a budget, never that it "fits".
The brief this produces is deliberately plain text: paste it into any quote form, email or WhatsApp to a landscaper. Sizes, specs and exclusions up front are what make three quotes comparable line-by-line — and what stop the vague "garden makeover" quote that mysteriously expands to your whole budget.
• Vague briefs get padded quotes. "Tidy up the garden and do a patio" forces the installer to price the unknown. A size, a slab type and a boundary length remove the padding.
• Salespeople expand scope; specs resist. The classic move is quoting the whole front garden in paving when you wanted half. A written spec with essentials marked keeps your project yours.
• Three quotes only work if they price the same thing. Identical briefs make the outlier obvious — and give you the confidence to ask why.
• Phasing is a strategy, not a failure. Gardens are built in seams (clearance → hard landscaping → planting → lawn). Deferring phase two costs nothing except patience, and this planner keeps the later pile coherent.
• DIY carve-outs need to be explicit. "We'll do the borders and beds ourselves" is a perfectly normal line in a brief — trades price around it happily when it's written down, and grumble when it appears mid-job.
There's no one number — it's the sum of the jobs, which is exactly why this planner prices your mix rather than an average. As anchors: a 25m² patio runs £1,500–£4,500 fitted, a boundary of fencing £770–£1,900, a new 50m² lawn £500–£1,350 laid, 15m² of decking £750–£1,350 in softwood. A typical 'patio + lawn + fence' refresh lands somewhere in £3,000–£8,000; add a driveway or go luxury on materials and £12,000+ is realistic.
The things quotes go wrong without: sizes (even paced-out ones), the spec per element (which slab, which panel type — not just 'a patio'), what's essential vs nice-to-have, anything you'll DIY yourself, and a working budget. That's precisely what the planner's brief generates — and a tradesperson who sees a clear brief prices sharper because they're not padding for the unknown.
Give a working band, not a ceiling — 'the quoted work should come in around £6,000' — and pair it with a tight spec, which is what stops the budget simply being absorbed. The spec is your protection: with sizes and materials pinned down, three quotes are comparable line-by-line and the outlier explains itself.
The honest tiers: genuinely DIY-able — raised beds, borders and mulching, laying turf on prepared ground, gravel on a dug base; hard but doable — fencing on level ground, softwood decking, artificial grass; think twice — patios (a full mortar-bed weekend education) and block paving; not DIY — tarmac and resin surfacing. The planner lets you flip any DIY-able element and shows exactly what the swap saves.
Broadly: clearance → access-heavy hard landscaping (driveway, fencing if machines need through) → patio and decking → beds and borders → lawn last — because every other trade will walk across it. Phasing along those seams is also the honest way to spread cost: the planner's 'later' pile is built to be a coherent phase two, not leftovers.
Every price band on this page traces to a source we checked ourselves, with the date we checked it. Prices move — if one of these looks out of date, tell us and we'll recheck it.
