What You Should Be Paying for a Landscape Design
Once you understand how much landscape design costs, the next question is what you are actually paying for. Landscape design is not a single drawing or decision. It is a structured process made up of distinct phases, each serving a different purpose.
Knowing how these phases work makes it far easier to compare proposals and choose the right level of service for your project.
Landscape designer and client on site
Pre meetings and site visits
Most landscape projects begin with an initial meeting and site visit. This is where the designer visits your home, listens to your ideas, reviews the site, and gathers enough information to understand the scope of the project.
Historically, many designers treated this as unpaid time, particularly when the meeting formed part of winning the job. That still happens, but it is becoming less common. Busy or well established designers often charge for this stage and frame it as a garden consultation.
There is real value here. Early advice can help shape budgets, identify constraints, and clarify whether a project is realistic before committing further.
Typical cost range
Often free, or
$150 to $500 for a paid consultation depending on experience, travel, and time
This stage usually sits outside the formal design fee.
Concept design or sketch design
Concept design is the first formal design phase once a designer is engaged. This is where your brief, ideas, site constraints, and the designer’s initial response are brought together into a clear direction.
The focus is on big moves rather than detail. Layout, circulation, major zones, and key elements such as pools, seating areas, planting character, or material preferences are explored. Concept design is meant to generate discussion and alignment, not lock everything in.
Plans, diagrams, mood imagery, or early plant palettes are common outputs. Strong preferences should be tested here, not later when changes become expensive.
Typical share of design fee
Around 10 to 30 percent of the total design fee
Using a $100,000 construction budget
Overall design fee at 10 percent equals $10,000
Concept design typically costs $1,000 to $3,000
Detailed design and construction documentation
Once the concept is agreed, the project moves into detailed design and documentation. This is where ideas are resolved into buildable information and where most design time is spent.
The designer develops levels, materials, planting, circulation, and construction details. Coordination with architects, engineers, or other consultants often happens here. On more complex projects, this stage may be split into detailed design and then construction documentation.
Drawings are typically produced in CAD and are detailed enough for contractors to price accurately and build from. If structures are involved, engineer sign off may be required, and these drawings are often used for planning or building permits.
This phase carries the greatest responsibility and risk, which is why it forms the largest part of the fee.
Typical share of design fee
Around 50 to 70 percent of the total design fee
Using a $100,000 construction budget
Overall design fee at 10 percent equals $10,000
Detailed design and documentation typically costs $5,000 to $7,000
Construction administration
Construction administration is when the designer stays involved during the build. This can include site visits, answering contractor questions, reviewing shop drawings, and checking that work aligns with the design intent.
This stage is often charged hourly or managed through a retainer, as the level of involvement can vary widely between projects. Some builds need very little input, while others benefit from regular oversight.
While it can be tempting to skip this phase, it is often where design quality is protected. Decisions made on site without the designer present can quickly undo months of careful planning.
Typical share of design fee
Around 10 to 20 percent of the total design fee
Using a $100,000 construction budget
Overall design fee at 10 percent equals $10,000
Construction phase services typically allow $1,000 to $2,000
A practical way to start with less risk
If you are unsure about committing to a full landscape design service, Gramina Garden Plans offer a practical way to start.
Gramina plans let you experience what it is like to work with a professional landscape designer. You can see how information is structured, what a design pack includes, and how a site specific garden plan comes together without the cost or commitment of a full bespoke service.
They show you how a custom design might work on your own site, including layout, planting, materials, and construction guidance. For many people, this clarity makes it much easier to decide whether full services are right for them.
Gramina Garden Plans start at $99 and are designed as a low risk way to dip your toe into professional landscape design.
1. Starting With Ideas Instead of the Site
Many people begin with a grab bag of influences: Pinterest boards, favourite plants, images of gardens they like. The site itself is treated as a blank canvas rather than the thing that should lead the design. Sun, orientation, slope, access, existing trees, and constraints are not properly understood before ideas are placed.
When ideas come first, the garden ends up fighting its own conditions. Layouts are driven by preference rather than suitability, and problems appear later that could have been avoided with a clearer reading of the site at the outset.
2. Locking in Large Elements Too Early
Big elements such as sheds, pools, driveways, decks, and hard structures are often placed early because they feel decisive or urgent. Once fixed, they constrain everything else: circulation, planting space, access, sunlight, and future flexibility across the site.
These decisions are difficult to undo. Placing large, immovable elements without understanding the whole garden leads to compromised layouts that feel tight, awkward, or unfinished no matter how much effort follows.
3. Misreading the Importance of Sun
Sun is frequently underestimated in garden planning. It is treated as background information rather than the primary organiser of comfort, plant health, food growing, energy use, and how spaces are used across the year.
When sun is misread, gardens end up with seating in harsh exposure, productive areas in shade, lawns that struggle, and spaces that feel cold or unusable for long periods. These outcomes are set by layout, not planting.
4. Ignoring How People Actually Move and Use the Garden
Gardens are often planned without properly understanding daily movement and use. Where people walk, sit, garden, entertain, store things, move waste, and access tools is assumed rather than designed.
This leads to seating that is too far from the house, pools placed in uncomfortable conditions, compost systems that dry out, awkward paths, and gardens that feel inconvenient to maintain. A garden that does not support daily behaviour is rarely used well.
5. Getting Build Order Wrong
Build order is commonly overlooked during planning. Many gardens are constructed from the front of the property inward because it feels logical or convenient at the time.
As work moves deeper into the site, completed areas near the entry are repeatedly damaged, compacted, or destroyed. This causes rework, delays, and unnecessary cost. Build order is set by layout decisions made early, not by construction alone.
6. Underestimating What Plants Require to Establish
Plants are often treated as decorative elements rather than living systems. Soil preparation is minimal, species selection is poorly matched to conditions, and watering during establishment is underestimated, including for native plants.
Without good soil, appropriate species, and consistent water over the first year, plants struggle or fail. This leads to disappointment and replacement, even when the layout itself is sound.
A Simple Next Step
Avoiding these mistakes comes down to having a clear structure before committing to decisions. If you want a practical framework that applies these principles from the start, the Gramina Garden Plans provide clear layouts, sequencing, and build guidance suited to real Australian homes.
They help you make fewer early errors and support a garden that can be built properly and evolve over time.
