How much does it cost to landscape a backyard?
In materials, turning a bare backyard into a lawn, a patio and planted beds runs about $2.00 – $4.76 per square foot, so a 50 × 30 ft yard is around $3,000 – $7,147 before anyone is paid to build it. Here is what is inside that number, three yard sizes worked through, what the number leaves out, and the choices that move it most.
Backyard landscaping cost calculator
What will landscaping your yard cost in materials?
What is in the number
A landscaped yard is three or four different jobs on one piece of ground, and each is bought differently. The calculator divides the yard the way the example plans tend to settle: most of it lawn, a patio big enough for a table against the house, and beds along the far fence. Then it prices each part as the layers it is built from.
The lawn is sod laid over topsoil, at $0.40 – $1.10 per sq ft for the sod and $25 – $60 per cu yd for four inches of soil under it. The soil is the part people leave out of the estimate and then pay for anyway: sod laid on compacted subsoil is the sod that fails. Sod cost goes through it, and through seed, which is a fraction of the price and a season of waiting.
The patio is pavers at $12 – $28 per sq ft over a compacted gravel base at $40 – $85 per cu yd. It is the most expensive ground in the yard by some distance, which is why its size matters more than anything else on this page. Patio cost has the cheaper surfaces, and the paver guide how deep the base under them should go.
The beds are priced as three inches of mulch at $30 – $65 per cu yd. That is the ground, not what grows in it: a shrub is $25 – $90 each and a perennial $12 – $40 each, and a bed can hold as many or as few as you like, so plants are a line of their own, below.
By size
Materials only, at the national range, with the yard divided the usual way: about 63 per cent lawn, 12 per cent patio and 25 per cent beds. A 30 × 20 is a townhouse yard; 50 × 30 is what most suburban lots have behind the house.
| Yard | Lawn | Patio | Beds | Materials |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small, 30 × 20 ft | $268 – $696 | $891 – $2,073 | $42 – $90 | $1,200 – $2,859 |
| Typical, 50 × 30 ft | $670 – $1,740 | $2,227 – $5,182 | $104 – $226 | $3,000 – $7,147 |
| Large, 60 × 40 ft | $1,071 – $2,783 | $3,563 – $8,291 | $167 – $361 | $4,801 – $11,435 |
The same yard, three ways
How the yard is divided moves the number as much as its size does. The 50 × 30 ft yard again, made up three different ways. The low-water yard puts decomposed granite where the lawn was, at $45 – $95 per cu yd, and is the cheapest ground of the three by a wide margin; it is also the one that costs nothing to mow.
| Made up of | The split | Materials |
|---|---|---|
| Lawn, a patio and beds | 63% lawn, 12% patio, 25% beds | $3,000 – $7,147 |
| A big patio, beds and less lawn | 35% lawn, 25% patio, 40% beds | $5,178 – $12,123 |
| Low-water, with no lawn | 50% gravel ground, 20% patio, 30% beds | $4,149 – $9,567 |
What the number leaves out
Plants. Beds are priced as mulch because the plants in them are a choice, not a quantity: the same bed can be three shrubs or thirty perennials. As a rule of thumb a shrub every four feet along a bed, with perennials between, comes to a few hundred dollars per hundred square feet of bed. The planner counts each plant you put down, so the figure is yours to set.
The fence. A fence is bought by the running foot, around the yard rather than across it, at $20 – $60 per linear ft. Around the 50 × 30 ft yard that is 160 ft, or $3,200 – $9,600 in materials with a gate on top, which is a large share of the whole job and the reason it gets a page of its own.
Watering. A sprinkler system for the lawn is heads at $8 – $25 each plus pipe, valves and a controller, and a lawn of this size wants a dozen heads in two or three zones. Sizing a sprinkler zone works out the count.
Delivery. Topsoil, gravel and mulch arrive by the truckload at $50 – $150 a load, and a whole yard is several loads. Ordering the soil and the base stone from the same supplier on the same day is the easy saving.
Labour. Everything above is what the materials cost at the gate. Installed, a landscaped yard commonly runs two to three times that, with the grading, the patio base and the sod laying taking most of it. Those are also the three jobs that are hardest to do well by hand, and the ones worth hiring if you hire anything.
What moves the number
The patio. It is the dearest ground in the yard, so every square foot you take off it is worth several taken off the lawn. Size it to the table and chairs you actually own, plus three feet to push a chair back, and no more. The same footprint in poured concrete is about $6 – $14 per sq ft, and in decomposed granite held in with edging about $45 – $95 per cu yd.
Sod or seed. Seed at $0.08 – $0.25 per sq ft is the biggest single saving on the page, at the cost of a season with a fence round the mud. The topsoil under it is the same either way.
Less lawn. Every square foot that is not lawn is one you do not water, mow or feed. Beds along the fence at the usual depth are the cheapest ground after gravel, and the yard reads as planted rather than paved.
Doing it in stages. The ground work, grading, topsoil and the patio base, wants doing first and all at once, because it is what everything else sits on. The sod, the plants and the fence can each follow in their own season, and a plan drawn now is what keeps the second year's work fitting the first year's.
Quick checklist
- Measure the yard and decide the split before you price anything: the patio's size is the number that matters.
- Price the lawn as sod over four inches of topsoil, not sod alone.
- Price the patio as pavers over a gravel base, or concrete, at the same size.
- Add the fence by the running foot around the perimeter, and a gate.
- Budget delivery per load, and plants by the plant.
- Double the materials figure, at least, if the work is being hired.
The calculator's "Draw it in the planner" puts your yard down already divided up, so the first thing you do is move the patio rather than draw one. Paint over any of it, count the plants in, add the fence round the outside, and the total follows for your state. Or start from the suburban back yard, which is this split drawn out at 60 × 40 ft.