Plan your project budget.

What this calculator works out

Rather than estimating a total cost, this tool takes a budget you already have in mind and suggests how to split it across the categories a typical landscaping project involves: design, hardscape, planting, drainage and retaining, and contingency. It's useful once you have a rough figure and want to sanity-check whether it stretches across everything you're hoping to do.

The split shifts based on project complexity and where the emphasis sits. A simple, flat-site project can allocate more toward hardscape and planting; a complex or sloping site needs a bigger share reserved for drainage and retaining before the visible finishes are even considered.

Complexity changes the underlying split because it changes what the budget has to cover before the parts you can see. A complex site with retaining, drainage or significant earthworks needs to fund that structural work first — cutting it to protect the planting or hardscape budget is a common way projects run into trouble mid-build. Contingency is included deliberately and is meant to stay in the plan, not be the first thing trimmed when a quote comes in over budget, since site conditions on landscaping projects are frequently only fully understood once work starts.

This is a planning allocation based on typical project shapes, not a quote for your specific site — treat it as a starting point for a conversation with a landscaper. If a quote comes back needing more in one category, look first at whether the contingency allocation can absorb it before cutting another category outright.

The three complexity levels are deliberately broad. A simple project is flat ground with straightforward access; complex usually means retaining, significant earthworks, or a site with real access constraints. If your project sits somewhere between the two, try both settings and treat the results as a realistic range rather than picking one number to hold yourself to.

This tool doesn't estimate your total budget for you — pair it with the landscaping cost calculator first if you need help arriving at a realistic overall figure before splitting it across categories, then come back here once you have a number to work with.