What landscape design and landscaping cost in south-east Queensland.
A garden is almost never one bill. These region-by-region guides set out the honest ranges, what moves them, and how to spend less by staging the work and doing the right bits yourself.
Cost is the first thing everyone wants to know, and the fairest answer is a range. A good rule of thumb: garden renovations across south-east Queensland can run from around 15 percent of your property’s value, depending on the features, access and retaining involved. Landscape design itself is usually a separate, fixed fee, starting from around $2,500 for a concept design, depending on available documentation, site and landscape feature complexity. But a good design can be worth far more than its price tag: it gives landscapers and DIYers a clear plan to build from, so you’re not paying twice to undo and redo work that wasn’t thought through properly the first time.
In rough dollars that commonly means $40,000 to $150,000 plus, but what moves the number is demand on trades right now, how easily materials and machinery can get to your site, and the landscape features involved, things like pools, overhead structures, retaining, or any element that needs engineering, certification or even council approval. Pick your region below for the local picture, or start with our guide to how landscape design is priced.
How designers actually price a design
Most landscape designers quote a fixed price per stage rather than a percentage of your build, because a percentage is impossible to plan around before anyone knows what the build costs. For a standard block, a concept design usually starts around $2,500 and moves up with site complexity and the features you want built in, a pool, retaining, an outdoor kitchen, several zones. A concept plan on its own is genuinely all some people need: confident DIYers, or homeowners with a landscaper they already trust, can take a strong concept and run with it.
If you want the whole job documented, a complete concept and detailed design package for a standard residential project commonly runs about $5,000 to $10,000, with complex sites higher. Whoever you approach, ask to see a portfolio and a sample documentation set, because what a “design” actually includes varies a lot between studios. It is also worth knowing the difference between a design-only studio and a design-and-build business: a design-and-build firm’s documentation is sometimes lighter, because their own crew builds it, which can make it harder to take the plan elsewhere and get competitive quotes. We are design-only, so the drawings are built to hand to any contractor you choose.
The three moves that bring any project’s cost down are the same everywhere: stage the work over time, do the soft layer (planting, mulch, turf, finishing) yourself while a contractor handles the structural and hidden jobs, and get the whole garden designed up front so the expensive decisions are settled once. Our guides to phasing a garden renovation and how much landscape design costs go into each in detail.