Garden Design & Landscaping Cost in South East England

Garden sizes and layouts vary a lot across South East England, including between Brighton, Southampton, Portsmouth and Reading - from long, narrow gardens attached to terraced housing to the larger plots more common on newer or edge-of-town developments - which shapes what landscaping work actually makes sense for a given property.

Typical costs

• Basic tidy-up (turfing, planting, fencing): roughly £1,200-£3,500
• Mid-range redesign (patio, borders, new fencing, lighting): roughly £4,000-£10,000
• Full landscaping (hard landscaping, decking, irrigation, garden room base): £10,000-£20,000+

Rear gardens that back onto a kitchen extension are often designed together with the extension itself, since the level of the new patio or doors usually needs to work with the extension's floor height.

What affects the price

Access is a recurring theme for garden work on terraced streets without side access, where materials like paving slabs, soil and turf often have to be carried through the house, adding labour time a detached property with a side gate wouldn't incur. Mature trees are sometimes protected by a Tree Preservation Order, which restricts what can be removed or pruned without council permission - worth checking before a design is finalised.

Getting the most from a small garden

For narrower plots, a landscaper who plans zones (dining, planting, storage) along the length of the garden rather than trying to fit everything in a single open layout usually gets a better result than a generic "full redesign" template - it's worth asking to see photos of gardens of a similar size and shape before you commit.