How Much Does Landscaping Cost? Priced Line by Line for 2026

• Gardening and lawncare services (CPI SEHP02)
• All items (CPI-U)

Source: BLS CPI-U, U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted, series CUUR0000SEHP02 and CUUR0000SA0; September 2022 not published for SEHP02.

Show the numbers

	Gardening and lawncare services (CPI SEHP02)	All items (CPI-U)
Sep 2019	100	100
Sep 2020	102.30	101.40
Sep 2021	106.50	106.80
Sep 2023	120.90	119.90
Sep 2024	133.50	122.80
Sep 2025	152	126.50

Most landscaping cost guides lead with one range for a whole yard. A landscaping bill is really a stack of separate line items: soil, turf, plants, mulch, stone, pipe, wire and the hours to install them. This page prices each line from published material prices, extension-service labor rates and federal wage data, then adds them up for three typical yards so you can see where the money goes and check a contractor’s quote line by line.

We don’t install landscapes, so none of these figures are invoices from jobs. They are estimates built from the cited inputs, and the arithmetic is shown in the method note near the end. Guides to individual projects are collected on our Costs hub.

What each part of a landscaping job costs

The table lists installed prices per unit for the pieces most residential projects are built from. Softscape rows are our estimates (materials plus labor); hardscape, irrigation and lighting rows use the typical project costs that members of the National Association of Landscape Professionals reported in 2023, because we could not find primary labor-productivity data for those trades.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

Component	Unit	Installed cost	Built from
Finish grading with 4 in. of topsoil	per 1,000 sq ft	$420–$1,230	Topsoil $20–$55/cu yd, skid-steer spreading 3–7 cu yd/hr
Sod, laid on prepared soil	per sq ft	$0.58–$1.08	Sod $0.47–$0.75/sq ft, 250–550 sq ft laid per hour
Grass seed, tall fescue, spread	per 1,000 sq ft	$18–$57	6–9 lb seed at $2.00–$5.40/lb; soil prep extra
Mulch, 3 in. deep	per sq ft of bed	$0.44–$1.12	Mulch $9.50–$50/cu yd; 1 cu yd covers 108 sq ft
Shrub or perennial, 1-gallon	each	$14–$34	Plant $10.75–$27.99, 14–20 planted per hour
Shrub, 5-gallon	each	$33–$116	Plant $26.75–$99.99, 5–9 planted per hour
Shade tree, 2 in. caliper	each	$458–$623	Tree $400–$500, 1 to 1.5 labor-hours
Concrete paver patio	per sq ft	about $36	NALP typical: $10,500 for 18 x 16 ft (2023)
Retaining wall block (materials only)	per sq ft of wall face	$8.40–$17.45	2026 supply-yard prices; labor and base extra
Lawn irrigation system	per sq ft of lawn	about $1.20	NALP typical: $6,000 for a 5,000 sq ft lawn (2023)
Low-voltage lighting	per fixture	about $340	NALP typical: $6,800 for 20 LED lights and a transformer (2023)
Landscape design	per hour	$102–$133	Landscape architect wages x industry revenue-to-payroll ratio
Crew labor	per worker-hour	$58–$82	Landscaping wages x industry revenue-to-payroll ratio

Three yards, priced line by line

To turn unit prices into a budget, multiply each line by your quantities. Here is a typical front-yard refresh: 1,000 sq ft of new lawn and 300 sq ft of planting beds.

Front yard line item	Low	High
Finish grade and 4 in. topsoil, 1,000 sq ft	$417	$1,226
Sod, 1,000 sq ft	$580	$1,080
Mulch, 300 sq ft of beds at 3 in.	$132	$336
8 shrubs, 5-gallon	$266	$931
20 perennials or small shrubs, 1-gallon	$273	$677
1 shade tree, 2 in. caliper	$458	$623
Delivery charges (sod and bulk material)	$150	$525
Total, about 1,300 sq ft	$2,276	$5,398
Per sq ft	$1.75	$4.15

A backyard with a lawn, beds, a patio, irrigation and lights scales the same way. The softscape lines below repeat the front-yard math for 1,800 sq ft of lawn and 400 sq ft of beds. The hardscape lines use NALP members’ 2023 typical costs, which have not been adjusted for inflation since, so treat them as a floor.

Backyard line item	Low	High
Grading, topsoil and sod, 1,800 sq ft	$1,795	$4,151
Mulch, 400 sq ft of beds	$176	$448
12 five-gallon shrubs, 30 one-gallon plants	$808	$2,413
2 shade trees, 2 in. caliper	$916	$1,246
Delivery charges	$150	$525
Concrete paver patio, 18 x 16 ft (288 sq ft)	$10,500	$10,500
Irrigation for 1,800 sq ft of lawn at $1.20/sq ft	$2,160	$2,160
10 low-voltage lights at $340 each	$3,400	$3,400
Total, about 2,500 sq ft	$19,905	$24,843

Two things move these totals more than anything else. The first is hardscape: the patio alone is roughly half of the backyard bill. The second is where you live, because labor (about 42 percent of what landscaping firms bill, wages plus benefits) tracks local wages. A Massachusetts job runs about 10 percent above these numbers and a Mississippi job about 8 percent below (see the state table further down).

Landscaping cost per square foot, and why published figures disagree

Per-square-foot prices only mean something if you know what area they divide by and what is in the job. Our softscape builds come to $1.75 to $4.15 per sq ft of area worked. The backyard with a patio, irrigation and lighting comes to about $8 to $10 per sq ft, because hard surfaces and wiring cost far more per foot than soil and plants.

That is why marketplace cost guides publish ranges that disagree with each other: they average jobs with different mixes of hardscape and softscape and rarely say which. When you compare quotes, compare them line by line (cubic yards of topsoil, square feet of sod, number and container size of plants), not on a single per-foot figure.

Line item by line item: how each price was built

Landscape design

Landscape architects earned a median of $38.40 an hour in May 2025, and the 75th percentile earned $50.04 (BLS OEWS, May 2025). Landscape architecture firms took in $2.67 of revenue for every dollar of payroll in 2022 ($6.60 billion of revenue on $2.47 billion of payroll, Census 2022 Economic Census, NAICS 541320). Multiplying the two gives an estimated billing rate of about $102 to $133 an hour.

A plan that takes 10 hours of design time would cost about $1,020 to $1,330 at those rates; the hours depend on the yard and on how many revisions you ask for, so ask the designer for an hours estimate up front. Many landscaping companies do not sell design as a separate service at all: in the 2022 Economic Census, only 5.9 percent of landscaping establishments reported revenue from residential landscape architecture (Census, 2022 Economic Census product lines).

Grading and topsoil

Spreading 4 inches of topsoil over 1,000 sq ft takes 12.3 cubic yards (1,000 x 4/12, divided by 27). Purdue Extension gives the same order of magnitude: about 19 cubic yards for a 6-inch layer over 1,000 sq ft (Purdue AY-28-W). Published 2026 prices run from $20 a cubic yard for municipal topsoil in Albany, NY to $55 for screened topsoil blended with compost at MK Landscape Supply in Pennsylvania.

The Utah State University model rates skid-steer spreading at 3 to 7 cubic yards an hour (USU VLE task-rate database). Caltrans prices a small skid steer at $38.35 to $50.96 an hour to own and operate, without the operator, and notes that rental yards usually charge more (Caltrans equipment rental rates, effective Sept. 1, 2026). For a sense of rental pricing, New York State’s contract rate for a skid steer is $336.11 a day (NY OGS contract 72007-23182). Materials, operator time and machine time together come to about $420 to $1,230 per 1,000 sq ft. Removing old turf, hauling off spoil and fixing drainage are extra.

Sod or seed

Sod farms sold to the trade at weighted averages of 28 to 54 cents a square foot in the second quarter of 2026, depending on species (centipedegrass lowest, St. Augustinegrass highest), plus 5 to 12 cents a square foot for delivery (USDA AMS National Quarterly Sod Report, April to June 2026). North Carolina producers reported a delivered price of $0.47 a square foot for bermudagrass (NC State Extension, 2026 Sod Producers’ Report). At retail, a 450 sq ft pallet of St. Augustine costs $240 in Houston, or $0.53 a square foot (Texas Garden Materials), and tall fescue costs $0.75 a square foot in Chino, California (California Sod Center).

A worker lays 250 to 550 sq ft of sod an hour by hand in the USU model, which adds $0.11 to $0.33 a square foot at our labor rates. Installed sod therefore runs about $0.58 to $1.08 a square foot on soil that is already graded. Our sod installation cost guide prices pallets, delivery and prep in more detail.

Seed is far cheaper per foot but slower. Purdue recommends 6 to 9 lb of tall fescue per 1,000 sq ft (Purdue AY-3-W); the University of Tennessee recommends 1.5 to 2 lb for Kentucky bluegrass and 0.5 to 1 lb for hulled common bermudagrass (UT Extension W160-B). At $2.00 a pound in a 50 lb bag or $5.40 a pound in a 5 lb bag (Hancock Seed, tall fescue), tall fescue seed costs $12 to $49 per 1,000 sq ft, and broadcasting it takes about 6 minutes. The soil prep is the same as for sod, so the real saving is the sod itself. The trade-offs are covered in sod vs. seed.

Trees, shrubs and perennials

Plant prices vary widely between nurseries. A 1-gallon pot costs $10.75 at Nevada’s state conservation nursery (Nevada Division of Forestry, 2026 spring list) and $27.99 for a Green Velvet boxwood at a Massachusetts garden center (Corliss Brothers 2026 catalog). Five-gallon plants run $26.75 to $99.99 across the same two lists. A 2 to 2.5 in. caliper shade tree costs $400 in Kansas (Blueville Nursery 2026 catalog) and $499.99 in Massachusetts (Corliss).

Planting rates from the USU model are 14 to 20 one-gallon plants an hour, 5 to 9 five-gallon plants an hour and 1 to 1.5 hours per 2-inch tree. That puts installed prices at about $14 to $34 per 1-gallon plant, $33 to $116 per 5-gallon shrub and $458 to $623 per tree. Retail nurseries that plant for you often charge more than this labor math: Blueville publishes $30 per shrub, half the tree’s price for tree planting, and $110 an hour per person for other work. Clemson Extension’s rule for any planter: dig the hole at least twice as wide as the root ball and no deeper than its height (Clemson HGIC 1001).

Mulch

Bulk wood mulch costs $9.50 a cubic yard from Grand Rapids, Michigan’s yard-waste program and $50 for dyed hardwood at MK Landscape Supply. One cubic yard covers 108 sq ft at 3 inches deep (UF/IFAS Gardening Solutions), and Clemson advises keeping fine wood mulch to 2 to 3 inches (Clemson HGIC 1604).

Spreading by hand runs 125 to 165 sq ft an hour in the USU model, so a cubic yard takes 0.65 to 0.86 labor-hours. Installed mulch comes to about $47 to $121 a cubic yard, or $0.44 to $1.12 per sq ft of bed at 3 inches. Delivery is separate: Orange County, North Carolina, charges $75 for loads within 10 miles.

Patios, walkways and retaining walls

NALP members put the typical cost of an 18 by 16 ft concrete paver patio, dry-set over a compacted gravel and sand base, at $10,500 in the 2023 report, or about $36 a square foot (NAR/NALP, 2023). The pavers themselves are a small part of that: a Washington supply yard lists concrete pavers at $3.80 to $7.55 a square foot in July 2026 (Morrison Gravel patio price guide). Most of the rest is excavation, a compacted base (the industry minimum for patios is 4 inches after compaction, with 1 inch of bedding sand, per CMHA Tech Note PAV-TEC-002) and labor. See the paver patio cost guide for a full build-up.

Segmental retaining wall block costs $8.40 to $17.45 per square foot of wall face at the same yard; its blocks are labelled for 3 or 4 ft “without engineering” (Morrison Gravel walls price guide, July 2026). The International Residential Code exempts walls up to 4 ft, measured from the bottom of the footing, from a building permit unless they hold back a surcharge such as a driveway (IRC R105.2, quoted in City of Port Townsend handout). Where a permit is needed, fees are usually modest; Longview, Texas, charges $100 (Longview fee schedule 2025-2026). Engineering, drainage stone and excavation are what make tall walls expensive; the retaining wall cost guide covers them.

Irrigation

NALP members put a typical sprinkler system for a 5,000 sq ft lawn at $6,000 in 2023, or $1.20 per square foot of lawn. Parts are a minority of that. Current online prices: a Hunter 6-station Wi-Fi-ready controller is $133.49 on sale ($217.99 list) (Cheap Sprinklers); a Hunter PGP rotor $13.49 (Sprinkler Warehouse); a Pro-Spray body $2.49 to $3.99 (Sprinkler Warehouse); a 1-inch PGV valve $20.99 to $30.48 (Sprinkler Warehouse); and 100 ft of 1-inch poly pipe $44.99 (K&K Hardware).

Two items people forget. In Texas, selling or installing irrigation work requires a state landscape irrigator license (TCEQ landscape irrigator licensing), and many cities require an irrigation or backflow permit: $80 for a residential job in Longview and $50 in Fair Oaks Ranch (Fair Oaks Ranch fee schedule, 2025). Check the installer’s license before you sign; our guide to checking a landscaper’s license shows how. On running costs, the EPA says a WaterSense-labelled smart controller can save an average home up to 15,000 gallons a year compared with a clock timer (EPA WaterSense).

Landscape lighting

NALP members priced a standard 600-watt transformer with 20 LED fixtures at $6,800 in 2023, about $340 per light installed. Fixture prices span a wide range: a brass spotlight is $39.99 (Volt Lighting) and a brass path light $55.99 (Volt Lighting), while an FX Luminaire path light lists at $144.55 (Sprinkler Supply Store). A 300-watt transformer costs $229.99 (Volt) to $282.42 for a Kichler stainless unit (Sprinkler Supply Store). Parts for 20 fixtures and one transformer therefore run about $1,030 to $3,170, and the rest of a professional price is wire, trenching, layout and labor.

Ongoing maintenance

NALP members put a year of landscape maintenance (annual mulch, mowing 2,835 sq ft of lawn, pruning shrubs and planting about 60 annuals or perennials) at $4,800 in 2023, and six fertilizer and weed-control applications on 5,000 sq ft at $415 a year. Lawn and garden service prices have risen 39.4 percent since April 2023 (BLS CPI, gardening and lawncare services, April 2023 to August 2026), which would put those packages at about $6,690 and $580 today, or roughly $560 a month for full maintenance.

Mowing time is the main driver of a weekly bill. The USU model rates a 21-inch class walk-behind mower at 5,300 sq ft an hour and a 36 to 42-inch mower at 25,000 sq ft an hour, so a 5,000 sq ft lawn takes about 12 to 57 minutes of mowing before trimming and drive time.

What landscapers charge per hour (and whether $100 an hour is too much)

A landscaping and groundskeeping worker earned a median of $18.82 an hour in May 2025; first-line supervisors earned $28.09 (BLS OEWS, May 2025; BLS OEWS supervisors). Wages are only part of what an employer pays: for private-industry service workers, wages were 76.9 percent of total compensation in June 2026 (BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, table 4), so a median worker costs the company about $24.47 an hour before trucks, equipment, insurance, overhead and profit.

Two federal datasets show what the industry actually bills on top of that. In 2022, landscaping companies took in $3.10 of revenue for every dollar of payroll ($115.4 billion on $37.3 billion, Census 2022 Economic Census, NAICS 561730). They also took in $142,817 per employee; at the industry’s 37.3 average weekly hours (BLS CES, 2022), that is about $74 per paid hour, or about $82 in 2025 wage terms after average hourly earnings rose from $24.90 to $27.63 (BLS CES).

That gives a defensible billed range of $58 to $82 per worker-hour: the median wage times the industry’s revenue-to-payroll ratio at the low end, and average revenue per paid hour at the high end. So $100 an hour for a two-person crew ($50 per person) is below average, and $100 an hour for one person is above it but not unusual in high-wage states or for skilled work such as design, stonework or lighting. Blueville Nursery in Kansas, for example, publishes $110 an hour per person. For pay detail by occupation, see our landscaper salary report.

Landscaping labor costs by state

Material prices vary by supplier more than by state, but labor tracks local wages. The table ranks states by the May 2025 median wage for landscaping and groundskeeping workers. The price factor applies the wage gap to the labor share of a typical bill (42 percent: payroll is 32.3 percent of industry revenue, and wages are 76.9 percent of compensation), so multiply any national estimate on this page by your state’s factor.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

State	Median wage	vs. U.S. ($18.82)	Price factor
District of Columbia	$23.46	+25%	1.10
Massachusetts	$23.40	+24%	1.10
Alaska	$22.93	+22%	1.09
Washington	$22.57	+20%	1.08
Minnesota	$22.41	+19%	1.08
Vermont	$22.23	+18%	1.08
Maine	$22.10	+17%	1.07
Hawaii	$22.08	+17%	1.07
Colorado	$22.00	+17%	1.07
Connecticut	$21.99	+17%	1.07
California	$21.90	+16%	1.07
Montana	$21.80	+16%	1.07
Oregon	$21.65	+15%	1.06
New Hampshire	$21.58	+15%	1.06
New York	$21.56	+15%	1.06
Rhode Island	$21.51	+14%	1.06
Illinois	$21.05	+12%	1.05
Idaho	$20.00	+6%	1.03
New Jersey	$19.88	+6%	1.02
Wisconsin	$19.82	+5%	1.02
North Dakota	$19.61	+4%	1.02
Utah	$19.59	+4%	1.02
Pennsylvania	$18.99	+1%	1.00
Maryland	$18.93	+1%	1.00
Kansas	$18.91	0%	1.00
Nebraska	$18.82	0%	1.00
Arizona	$18.71	-1%	1.00
Iowa	$18.71	-1%	1.00
Nevada	$18.66	-1%	1.00
Missouri	$18.52	-2%	0.99
Virginia	$18.46	-2%	0.99
Wyoming	$18.42	-2%	0.99
Ohio	$18.38	-2%	0.99
Michigan	$18.33	-3%	0.99
Indiana	$18.30	-3%	0.99
Georgia	$18.25	-3%	0.99
North Carolina	$18.22	-3%	0.99
New Mexico	$18.06	-4%	0.98
Delaware	$17.96	-5%	0.98
Florida	$17.84	-5%	0.98
Tennessee	$17.80	-5%	0.98
Texas	$17.66	-6%	0.97
South Carolina	$17.65	-6%	0.97
Kentucky	$17.63	-6%	0.97
Arkansas	$17.20	-9%	0.96
Oklahoma	$17.20	-9%	0.96
Alabama	$17.13	-9%	0.96
South Dakota	$17.01	-10%	0.96
Louisiana	$16.76	-11%	0.95
West Virginia	$15.50	-18%	0.93
Mississippi	$15.21	-19%	0.92

The spread is wider than most cost guides suggest: Massachusetts pays 24 percent above the national median and Mississippi 19 percent below, which works out to about 10 percent above and 8 percent below national prices for the same job. Business counts, revenue and payroll by state are in our landscaping industry by state data.

Why landscaping quotes keep rising

Consumer prices for gardening and lawncare services rose 12.3 percent from July 2025 to July 2026, against 3.4 percent for all items. Over three years (August 2023 to August 2026) they rose 42.0 percent, more than four times overall inflation of 9.1 percent (BLS CPI series CUUR0000SEHP02; CUUR0000SA0). BLS skips months for this series when its sample is thin, so the table compares September readings, the month with the longest unbroken run.

Month	Gardening and lawncare services	All items
Sep 2019	100.0	100.0
Sep 2020	102.3	101.4
Sep 2021	106.5	106.8
Sep 2023	120.9	119.9
Sep 2024	133.5	122.8
Sep 2025	152.0	126.5

The inputs explain part of it. Average hourly earnings in landscaping services rose 11.0 percent from 2022 to 2025 (BLS CES), producer prices for fertilizer rose 37.8 percent from August 2024 to August 2026 (BLS PPI WPU0652, preliminary) and prices for commercial turf and grounds equipment rose 31.7 percent from August 2019 to August 2026 (BLS PPI WPU111401, preliminary). Any quote or cost guide built on 2023 prices is likely to be low now.

Is spending money on landscaping worth it?

For resale, routine care recovers more than big projects. In the NAR and NALP survey, Realtors estimated that a standard lawn-care program returns 217 percent of its cost at sale and an overall landscape upgrade 100 percent, while lighting and in-ground pools recover 59 and 56 percent. Those are Realtors’ estimates for 2023, not sale-price data, but they point one way: curb appeal is cheap, entertaining spaces are bought mostly for your own use.

Project	Typical cost (NALP members)	Cost recovered at sale (Realtors)
Standard lawn care (6 applications, 5,000 sq ft)	$415	217%
Landscape maintenance, one year	$4,800	104%
Overall landscape upgrade (walk, planters, shrubs, tree)	$9,000	100%
Outdoor kitchen	$15,000	100%
New paver patio, 18 x 16 ft	$10,500	95%
New wood deck, 14 x 18 ft	$16,900	89%
Tree care	$2,875	87%
Irrigation system, 5,000 sq ft lawn	$6,000	83%
Landscape lighting, 20 LED fixtures	$6,800	59%
Fire feature	$9,000	56%
In-ground pool, 18 x 36 ft	$90,000	56%

This page is general information, not legal or engineering advice. Permit rules, irrigation licensing and retaining-wall engineering thresholds vary by city and state; confirm with your local building department before you build or hire.