ᐅ Landscaping: When Should You Start Planning?

You can plan your garden in several stages.

1. Structural planning "now" – for example, paving, paths, buildings, style, special features like shaping the terrain, swimming pool, pond, fire pit... This allows you to agree with the builder on "no-go" zones for machinery and heavy equipment to keep some soil uncompacted. For this, reviewing the plans with the landscape gardener and having a reasonable hourly rate for the discussions is sufficient.

2. Detailed planning "later" – the shell of the house is completed, and you have a better sense of the spatial dimensions and lighting. It becomes easier to develop ideas and discuss them with the landscape gardener. Use the same one if you had a good experience in stage 1.

Doing it yourself bit by bit can save a lot, as having it done by professionals can quickly cost between 25,000 and 100,000 euros. Most of the work is just repetitive labor; only a few tasks require incredible skill and decades of experience.

I would never pay 2000 euros to get a design and a quote, unless I didn’t care about what the total costs would be later on. Of course, there are people who can and want to spend 100,000 euros on landscapers.
I designed our garden myself. We had the paths compacted with gravel during the pool construction and later hired a landscaper to do the paving. One quoted over 16,000 euros, another only 6,000 euros.
We had similar large price differences for all garden work here, for example setting L-shaped retaining walls or strip footings for the garage.

Best regards,
Sabine

Here we even submitted the site plan with the building permit application—and were required to do so. On the one hand, the zoning plan here states that the natural terrain and its topography must be preserved outside of the building structure and terrace, which we demonstrated with this; and we also included compacted areas and terraces, which count towards the floor area ratio. Additionally, we showed the location of the prefabricated garage and driveway.

Of course, doing it yourself is a lot of fun and more than just "work." Depending on the terrain, it makes sense to think through the rough plan in advance and sketch it out. We only had the driveway, some stone walls, and a fence installed professionally. Then we considered what should go where, since we have quite a few plans, including a permaculture area, greenhouse, hot tub, shower and sauna, chickens, fire pit, dog run, and space for chopping wood... There will be years of work ahead. Great!

First, I would take some time to decide where everything should go. You can do this using software or on a large sheet of paper (like wallpaper or similar). You might then realize that you don’t need a professional landscaper or only need one for a few specific tasks.

I can only speak from my own experience that if you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty, you can definitely create a garden yourself. In our case, everything has always been done as much as possible by ourselves. We installed the lawn, planted trees and shrubs, and when they eventually became a problem or died (after decades), we dug them out again.

You should also consider whether you want a purely ornamental garden, a productive (kitchen) garden, or a combination of both.

It’s important to keep in mind that an ornamental garden, if you want it to look decent throughout the year, can actually require as much or even more work than a productive garden.