When you go to buy a new car, you can spend as little as $ 15,000.00 for an econobox, or you can spend several hundreds of thousands for a luxury sports car.  Why not just buy the cheapest?  It does provide basic transportation but it won’t provide the reliability, performance, quality, durability, functionality or perhaps most important the pride of ownership you want.  The same is true with the landscaping you surround your home with.  It costs about the same as your cars and if you want “good quality” landscaping, it will cost more than a poor job.

What makes the difference in price between cheap/poor and quality/long lasting? 

1. The materials.  Better quality materials cost more.  For example for a deck, spruce is the cheapest, pressure treated lumber is next, cedar is in the middle, then composite, solid PVC, and finally tropical hardwoods like ipe, mahogany and teak.   The cost of the hardwood decking is about 10 times that of spruce.

2. The quality of installation.  This means technique and details.  Good experienced labour and supervision cost several times more than temporary help but it is that experience, dedication and supervision that will get the job done correctly. Cutting corners on cost, often means that the interlock will sink for example in a few years versus lasting for 20 years!

3. Service.  A good landscape job has a good design that suits your tastes and budget, is explained in detail as to what is to be done and why, lets you see similar jobs and samples of materials before the work is done, has one person that gets your feedback on a regular basis as the job is done, does the job continuously and on time, maintains a clean safe worksite and provides maintenance guidelines and does warranty work as needed.

So you may not buy the Lamborghini but don’t get stuck with the Lada.

Aurora Landscape Contractors has been building beautiful landscapes in Aurora and area for 35 years.

For design and quotation of your next project, contact Al Trimble B.L.A.  O.A.L.A. at auroralandscape@gmail.com