In anticipation of summer, many homeowners start to focus on various landscaping projects. After all, if your landscape is not up to par, how will you enjoy your beautiful backyard or pool once summer rolls around?
If you have neglected your landscape for some time, chances are, you’ll need to spend a good amount of time or money to bring it into form. Nevertheless, it helps to know a sensible budget for the most prominent landscaping projects. Make sure you review the average costs of the following landscaping projects before you take out that credit card.
Maintaining A Lawn: $230
Hopefully, most of you already have a beautiful yard that you’ve maintained throughout the year. If you haven’t, there are a few lawn maintenance projects you need to consider right away.
To start out, go out and remove unsightly weeds, trim your trees and mow the grass. These are three of the easiest and effective ways to keep your yard looking like new all year.
If you’re looking for help, expect landscaping pros to charge roughly $230 to maintain your lawn. Just remember, this can be a recurring cost. You might as well learn to fish as opposed to having someone catch the fish for you.
Seeding A Lawn: $668
A few years of inattention can turn any yard into an ugly, brown patch. Rather than installing sod or turf, many homeowners reseed the lawn. As the most natural way to grow a bright, green yard, it’s also the most popular. However, like all landscaping projects below, it does not come without a cost. According to ImproveNet, the average price to reseed a lawn is $668. Bear in mind, this cost will largely fluctuate based on the size of your yard and whether or not you hire a landscaping pro. If you want to save money, do it yourself.
Maintaining Sprinkler System: $135
Watering your lawn becomes even more important the second spring rolls around. Hopefully, you winterized your sprinkler system to protect it during those cold winter months. If you didn’t, test our your sprinklers right now. If you did (good for you!), then you have to activate the system.
In addition to the above tasks, other sprinkler system issues tend to pop up every spring. If you plan on hiring a pro, expect to pay $135 to maintain a sprinkler system.
Trimming Trees & Shrubs: $407
Those of you with tall trees or plenty of bushes need to consider tree and shrub trimming as well. Unless you’re very comfortable with ladders and heights, you’ll probably have to hire a pro. The size, type and density of your plants affect maintenance costs, which can range from $90 to $400 per year. However, as the average cost dictates, some pros need specialized tools to get the job done right. If that’s the case, your annual charge could go up.
Curbing A Landscape: $1,135
Enough maintenance. It’s time to get into some landscaping enhancement projects you’ve likely put off. If you want to add some precision to your home’s landscape, installing curbing materials can produce spectacular results.
Landscape curbing is simply adding a designation between the end of your landscape and your walkway or driveway. Homeowners add borders with decorative brick, paver stones or gravel. Fortunately, most curbing materials are not final, so if you change your mind next summer, you can switch it out.
As you might expect, materials are not cheap. The average price to install landscape curbing is $1,135, but you can vastly reduce the cost by turning it into a DIY project.
Installing Sod: $1,616
If you don’t have a green yard but have the dirt and foundation in place, you could install sod, which is essentially squares of grass with the roots attached. As such, unlike seeding a lawn, you don’t have to wait months to utilize the final product.
Nonetheless, given its quick results, laying a sod lawn is more expensive ($1,616) than seeding a yard. A sod lawn can handle heavy traffic and use within five months, six months sooner than seeding the lawn.
Those of you thinking of limited the costs via DIY, beware. Installing sod is hard, strenuous work. Be prepared to get your hands and knees dirty.
