How to read a landscaping quote

The parts a readable quote has

• A scope, written in sentences. What is being built, where, and in what sequence. A quote that is a price with a one-line description is not a quote, it is an estimate wearing a suit.
• Quantities. Square feet of bed, linear feet of drain, face square feet of wall, square feet of paving, number and size of plants. Without quantities nothing can be compared and nothing can be checked at the end.
• Base and subgrade detail on anything hard. Excavation depth, aggregate type and thickness, compaction method. This is the most expensive part of a patio or a wall and the easiest to leave out of a cheap quote.
• Drainage, stated explicitly. Behind every wall and under every patio. If the word does not appear, either it is not in the price or nobody thought about it.
• Plant schedule with sizes. Species, container size or caliper, and count. A three gallon shrub and a one gallon shrub are different money and different establishment behaviour.
• Permits, named. Whether the land disturbance permit and any tree submittal are included, and who is pulling them.
• What happens to the spoil. Excavated Piedmont clay has to go somewhere and hauling it off is a real cost line.
• Reinstatement. Putting back the lawn, the fence panel and the bed the machine crossed to reach the work.
• Warranty terms. On plant material and on workmanship, with the duration and what voids it.
• A payment schedule tied to stages rather than to dates.

Why two quotes for one yard differ so much

Almost always because of what is under the ground. A patio quoted at the low end of the range and one at the high end can be the same pavers over completely different base sections. A wall priced cheaply may have no geogrid, no washed stone and no drain pipe, which means it is a stack of block rather than a retaining structure. Neither of those differences is visible on the day the job finishes, which is exactly why they are where corners get cut.

The second cause is access. On a Sandy Springs lot with a steep back yard and a narrow side gate, material has to be barrowed rather than driven, and that multiplies labour on every cubic yard. A quote that assumes machine access to the work area and one that does not will diverge substantially, and the assumption is worth asking about directly.

The third is scope boundary. One company includes the drainage that makes the patio work, another quotes the patio alone. The second number is lower and the finished result is worse.

The assumptions that move a total after the crew arrives

• Rock. The Piedmont does deliver it, weathered parent material sitting closer to the surface than anyone expected. Ask how it is priced if it appears.
• Depth to a stable subgrade. On fill or on a lot that has been regraded, the excavation may need to go deeper than assumed before anything can be compacted.
• Existing services. Irrigation lines, low voltage lighting, invisible fence, and utilities that are not where the locate marks say they are.
• Tree roots. Working around a protected root zone means hand digging and slower progress, and the alignment may have to shift.
• Weather. Nearly 50 inches of rain a year across roughly 113 rain days means schedule slip is normal rather than exceptional, and clay worked wet compacts badly.

What is normally excluded

None of these are unreasonable exclusions, and all of them are worth confirming rather than assuming.

• Permit fees. In Sandy Springs a residential land disturbance permit carries a $25 administrative fee, a $50 certificate fee, a $100 review fee and $200 per lot, plus a technology fee.
• Arborist reports, engineered wall drawings, and any survey work.
• Variance applications where work falls inside a stream buffer or the river corridor.
• Irrigation modification where a new bed, wall or patio cuts an existing line.
• Ongoing maintenance after the install, which is a separate arrangement almost everywhere.
• Utility relocation, and anything discovered underground that nobody could reasonably have known about.

The questions worth asking

1. What is the base section under the paving or behind the wall? Depth, material, and how it is compacted.
2. Where does the water go? Every drainage element should have a named destination, and it should be a legal one.
3. Does this include the permit, and who pulls it?
4. What happens if you hit rock, or if the subgrade is deeper than assumed?
5. How is access assumed, and what changes if a machine cannot reach the work?
6. What is the warranty on the plants, and what voids it? Establishment watering is usually the homeowner's responsibility, and it is usually the reason a warranty claim fails.

What a fair quote looks like when it is finished

It reads as a description of work rather than as a sales document. It has quantities you could check with a tape. It names the parts that are buried. It says what it excludes. And the total sits somewhere inside the ranges in the cost guide, or it explains why it does not.

A quote that is dramatically below the others is not usually a bargain. It is usually a different scope, and the difference is generally under the ground where it will not be visible for three years.

Sources

Permit fee figures from the City of Sandy Springs Land Disturbance Permits page. Climate figures from NOAA 1991 to 2020 normals for Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson. All cost ranges referenced are our own estimates of local market pricing.