Garden makeover cost guide
What a garden transformation really costs.
Our genuine trade prices for the materials, honest budget bands for the whole job — and a published £25,000 project you can measure us against.
Budgets buy outcomes, not hours
A garden makeover isn’t one product with one price — it’s groundwork, hard landscaping and planting in whatever proportion your garden needs. So instead of a meaningless “from £X”, here’s what different budgets genuinely buy, and what the materials inside them cost on our own trade account right now.
Roughly speaking: £5,000–£12,000 transforms one part of a garden properly — a new patio and lawn, say. £15,000–£30,000 rebuilds a typical rear garden end to end. Larger plots, retaining walls and luxury outdoor living push beyond that. Every project gets a free site visit and a written, itemised quotation.
Our real trade prices — Francome’s of Ollerton, August 2026
What makeover materials cost on our trade account
Porcelain paving — trade
£25 /m² ex VAT
Our actual price on recent Francome’s supplier quotations, against £30–£70/m² retail. The patio is usually a makeover’s single biggest material line — this is where the trade account earns its keep.
Sub-base & sands — trade
£29.99 /tonne
MOT Type 1 loose by the tonne; washed grit sand £38.69 and Cheshire red building sand £41.09 a bulk bag; cement £5.85 a 25kg bag. Every path, patio and lawn sits on these.
Brick & walling — trade
83p–£1.06 /brick
Blue Class B engineering bricks at 83p and Imperial Weathered Cheshire pre-war brick at £1.06 — the difference between a garden wall that matches a period house and one that nearly does.
Artificial grass — retail
£26–£40 /m²
Quality 30–32mm grass lists at £26–£40/m² retail; heavyweight 40mm up to £70/m². Add the MOT and grit sand base underneath — bought at our trade prices above.
Sleepers & decking — retail
£30–£58 each
Treated softwood sleepers (100×200mm × 2.4m) list at £30–£33, oak £58; softwood deck boards £4–£14, composite £36–£59. Trade terms bring each down.
The rest
Priced per job
Fencing, turf, topsoil, drainage and planting vary too much by garden to list honestly — they’re itemised line by line in your written quote.
Trade prices are ex VAT, taken from genuine recent supplier quotations on our account at Francome’s, the family-run builders’ merchant in Ollerton; retail comparisons are national merchants’ online listings including VAT, checked August 2026. Materials sourced through our trade account typically run 30–40% below retail — the saving shows up in your quotation, not in a thinner spec.
Where makeover money actually goes
The finished photos show paving, lawns and planting. The invoice tells a different story — and understanding it is the best protection against a quote that looks cheap and finishes expensive.
Groundwork first
Clearance, excavation, muck away, drainage and sub-bases are routinely a third or more of a full makeover — and the reason ours still look right ten years on.
Hard before soft
Patios, walls, fencing and structures carry most of the cost. Lawns, borders and planting deliver most of the visible change per pound.
Access
A garden a digger can reach is cheaper to build than one where 20 tonnes of spoil leaves by wheelbarrow through the kitchen. We price access honestly on the site visit.
New-build vs established
New-build plots hide compacted subsoil and buried rubble that must come out; established gardens hide old foundations and roots. Neither is free — surprises are why we look first and quote after.
Levels & retaining
A sloping garden that needs terracing or retaining walls is a different project from a flat one of the same size — engineering, not decoration, sets the price.
One team, one plan
Design and build under one roof means no gaps between trades, no re-work where they meet — and one written figure covering the whole transformation.
A real budget, published — Gorsty Way, Congleton
We don’t ask you to take budget bands on trust. Gorsty Way in Congleton was a £25,000 design-and-build: a bare, builder-finished plot turned into a complete family garden — groundwork, hard landscaping, lawn and planting.
The full story of that project, and what the budget bought at each stage, is written up on our blog: Gorsty Way — from a £25k blank canvas to a finished garden.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a full garden makeover cost in Cheshire?
Honestly: from a few thousand pounds for a single-element refresh to £20,000–£40,000+ for a complete design-and-build transformation of a typical rear garden. One of our published projects — Gorsty Way in Congleton — turned a bare £25,000 budget into a finished family garden, and we’ve written up exactly where that money went. The only number that matters is the written quote for your garden, which is free.
What eats the budget in a garden makeover?
The ground, nearly always. Clearance, excavation, muck away, drainage and sub-bases are the unglamorous half of the spend — on Cheshire clay they can’t be skipped, only hidden. After that, hard landscaping (patios, walls, fencing) outweighs soft landscaping: lawn, borders and planting usually cost less than people expect.
Can a makeover be phased to spread the cost?
Yes, and it’s often the smartest way to buy a big garden. We design the whole garden once, then build it in stages — groundwork and hard landscaping first, lawns and planting after — so nothing is dug up twice and each phase has its own written price. You get the full vision without the full invoice on day one.
Are the material prices in this guide accurate?
The trade prices are taken from genuine recent supplier quotations on our account at Francome’s, a family-run builders’ merchant in Ollerton, Cheshire, and are ex VAT; the retail comparisons are national merchants’ online listings including VAT, checked August 2026. Buying on trade terms typically puts us 30–40% below the retail prices a homeowner would pay — and prices move over time, which is exactly why we quote per project in writing rather than publishing a fixed menu.
Discuss your garden and your budget.
Free, no-obligation site visits across Cheshire. A written quote, typically within 48 hours. No pressure, no hard sell — just honest advice.
07742 611273