How to Quote a Landscaping Job: New Zealand Landscaper's Pricing Guide

Landscaping is one of the trickiest trades to price because a single job often rolls earthworks, retaining, planting and irrigation into one scope, and each piece carries a different rate. Split the job into elements, price each on its own, and the quote comes together faster while your margin stays protected. Here is how to price landscaping work for the New Zealand market.

Why landscaping quotes need to be itemised

A single line that reads "backyard makeover, 22,000 dollars" leaves you exposed. Landscaping invites scope creep: the client adds a path, swaps the plants, asks for a taller retaining wall. Breaking the work into separate lines gives you a clean basis for variations and shows the client exactly where their money goes, which makes a larger total easier to accept.

Common landscaping rates (2025 NZ market)

• Ready lawn supply and lay: 18 to 32 dollars per m2 including ground prep
• Timber sleeper retaining wall (H4 treated): 220 to 380 dollars per linear metre
• Concrete sleeper or block retaining wall: 380 to 700 dollars per linear metre
• Paving supply and lay: 90 to 180 dollars per m2 depending on paver and pattern
• Garden bed prep, soil and mulch: 45 to 90 dollars per m2
• Residential irrigation system: 1,800 to 5,000 dollars depending on zones and area
• Excavation and earthworks: 110 to 200 dollars per hour for a digger and operator

Treat these as guide ranges. Site access is the biggest single variable in landscaping. A back section reachable only through a narrow side gate eats far more labour than one with rear lane or driveway access.

Retaining walls and building consent

Landscaping itself carries no occupational licence in New Zealand, but retaining walls do trigger rules. A retaining wall over 1.5m high, or one closer to a boundary or carrying a surcharge such as a driveway above it, generally needs a building consent and often an engineer or a Licensed Building Practitioner (LBP). Use H4 treated timber for any in-ground structural element. Permeable paving and stormwater disposal rules vary by council, so confirm the local requirements before you price the drainage.

What a landscaping quote should include

• Business name, GST number (from IRD) and contact details
• Quote number, date and expiry, since plant and material prices shift with the season
• Client name and site address
• Itemised scope by element: earthworks, retaining, turf, beds, irrigation, paving
• Materials and labour listed separately
• Plant schedule where planting is involved, with species, grade and quantity
• GST at 15 percent, payment terms and a clear exclusions list

How to quote a landscaping job, step by step

The clients who accept a landscaping quote fastest are the ones who can watch it come together in a way they can follow. A consistent process gets you there without extra thinking on every job:

1. Walk the site first. Note access (gate width, gradient, distance from the truck to the work area), existing drainage, any services you will need to work around, and anything that has to be removed before the new work starts.
2. Measure every area on the spot. Turf and garden bed areas in m², retaining wall and edging runs in linear metres, paving areas in m². Round up slightly rather than under-measuring – you can adjust a figure down in the quote, but a missed metre on-site becomes an argument later.
3. Itemise materials and labour separately for each element. Turf, retaining, beds, irrigation and paving each get their own line, split into materials (at cost plus markup) and labour (your hourly or day rate). This is what lets a client accept part of the quote without renegotiating the whole job.
4. Apply your margin. Materials at cost plus 20 to 30 percent (see below), labour at a rate that covers your time, and a margin on any subcontracted or hired-in work such as excavation.
5. Add GST as its own line. 15 percent, shown separately from the subtotal, not buried inside the line items.
6. Present it on the spot. A landscaper who hands over an itemised, professional quote before leaving the property is hard to beat on speed, and speed is most of what wins landscaping work.

How to price materials and plants

Charge soil, mulch, aggregate and plants at cost plus 20 to 30 percent. Landscaping materials are bulky, easy to under order and often perishable, so the markup covers sourcing, delivery, wastage and the extra trip back to the supplier. For planting, quote a named schedule (for example, 5 Griselinia 2 litre, 3 Carex 1.5 litre) so there is no argument later about what was supplied.

Common landscaping quote line items

Most residential landscaping quotes are built from a similar set of line items, even when the scope varies job to job:

• Site clearance and green waste removal, priced per m² or per skip/load
• Excavation and cart away, priced per hour (digger and operator) or per m³
• Retaining wall, supply and install, priced per linear metre by wall type and height
• Turf supply and lay, or lawn preparation and seeding, priced per m²
• Garden bed preparation (soil, mulch, edging), priced per m²
• Planting, priced per plant against a named schedule (species, grade, quantity)
• Paving or stepping-stone paths, priced per m² by paver type
• Irrigation system, priced per zone or as a fixed job price
• Site clean-up and disposal on completion

Listing each of these as its own line – rather than one lump "landscaping" figure – is what lets a client see where the money goes, and makes it easy for them to trim scope (drop the irrigation, keep the turf) without the whole quote falling apart.

Worked example: lawn, planting and edging job in NZD

A typical small backyard job — relaying a lawn, planting a garden bed and edging it — might break down like this:

• Site prep and old lawn removal (allow half a day): NZ$450
• Ready lawn supply and lay (40 m² x NZ$24/m²): NZ$960
• Garden bed prep, soil and mulch (12 m² x NZ$65/m²): NZ$780
• Planting (8 x 2-litre shrubs, 12 x 1.5-litre groundcover, supply and plant): NZ$620
• Timber edging, supply and install (15 linear metres, indicative NZ$28/lm): NZ$420
• Subtotal: NZ$3,230
• GST (15%): NZ$484.50
• Total: NZ$3,714.50

The lawn and garden bed prep rates sit inside the ranges already quoted earlier in this guide (ready lawn NZ$18–$32 per m², garden bed prep NZ$45–$90 per m²) — this example just shows how the line items stack into a total a client can follow, rather than one lump "backyard makeover" figure.

Exclusions that protect your margin

• "Assumes clear machinery access. Manual cartage quoted separately."
• "Excavation assumes standard soil. Rock or fill removal charged at cost."
• "Retaining over 1.5m, consent and engineering at client cost unless listed."
• "Plant establishment and ongoing maintenance not included."
• "Council approvals and stormwater connections at client cost."

Quote on-site with landscaping quoting software

The best moment to quote a landscaping job is while you are standing in the yard with the client. You can read the access, the levels and the existing site, and the client is already engaged. The catch is that an itemised landscaping quote takes time to write up by hand, so most landscapers leave it until that evening or the weekend, by which point the client is comparing three other quotes.

Quoting software closes that gap. Describe the job (turf area, retaining length, garden beds, irrigation) or upload a plan, and current NZ rates are applied to materials, plants and labour in well under a minute. You review, adjust any line, and send a branded PDF before you leave the property. Getting the quote out first, on the spot, is the strongest lever a landscaper has on win rate.

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