Two quotes for the same garden arrive a week apart and one is thousands cheaper. Nothing visible explains it. The finished photographs in both portfolios look similar, the materials named are similar, and the difference sits entirely in work that will be invisible within a fortnight of completion.
That is the honest problem with hiring a landscaper: the parts that decide whether a garden lasts twenty years or fails in three are the parts you never see again. Gemzas Garden Maintenance and Landscaping works across Sevenoaks, and these are the questions that make an unreadable quote readable.
Ask how deep they are digging, and where the spoil goes
Every hard surface in a garden is only as good as the hole it sits in. A patio laid on 50mm of scalpings over undisturbed topsoil will move, because topsoil is organic, compressible and alive. The excavation has to reach undisturbed subsoil, which in much of this area means going deeper than people expect and taking a great deal of material away.
So the first question is a depth, and the second is a disposal. A quote that never mentions muck away is either absorbing a real cost silently or planning to leave the spoil in a heap behind the shed. Ask for both numbers and you have already separated two quotes that looked identical.
- Ask for the excavation depth in millimetres, not the phrase dug out.
- Ask who removes the spoil and whether it is priced in.
- Topsoil left under a patio is the commonest reason paving sinks.
The sub-base is the product; the paving is the finish
Under a good patio or path sits a compacted stone sub-base, laid and whacked in layers rather than dumped in one and rolled once. Layers matter because a compactor only meaningfully consolidates the top hundred millimetres or so; anything deeper than that in a single lift stays loose no matter how long the plate is run over it.
Above that sits the laying course, and this is where corners get cut most often. Slabs bedded on five blobs of mortar look fine on the day and fail within a couple of winters, because water gets into the voids, freezes, and levers each slab loose from underneath. A full bed of mortar costs more in materials and time and is the difference between a surface that lasts and one that rocks.
- Sub-base compacted in layers, not one deep lift.
- Slabs on a full mortar bed rather than blobs at the corners.
- Edge restraints haunched in concrete, or the whole surface creeps outward.
Falls, drainage and the question nobody asks
Ask any landscaper where the water will go. It is the single most revealing question you can put to someone standing in your garden, because the answer requires them to have looked at levels, at the position of the house, and at what happens in the heaviest rain rather than on a dry afternoon in June.
A terrace should fall away from the building at a gentle but genuine gradient, and it should finish well below the damp course. New paving laid level, or worse falling back toward the house, moves a drainage problem indoors. Where the ground cannot shed water naturally, the answer is a channel drain, a permeable build-up or a soakaway, and any of those three should appear in a written quote rather than as a conversation afterwards.
Planting, aftercare and who comes back
Hard surfaces are only half a garden. Beds need soil that has been improved rather than the compacted subsoil left after a build, and new planting needs watering through its first summer whether or not anyone remembers. A quote that ends at the last slab has quietly handed you the hardest year of the garden's life.
The most useful thing to establish is who returns. A firm that also maintains gardens has a reason to build something maintainable, and it will still be there when the first hedge needs shaping or a joint needs repointing. Gemzas Garden Maintenance and Landscaping runs maintenance rounds as well as projects, which means the same hands that built a garden are the hands that keep it.
- Improved topsoil in beds, not builders' subsoil raked flat.
- A written watering and establishment plan for the first season.
- One firm for the build and the upkeep, so nobody inherits a mystery.
Related pages
Questions customers ask
Why is one landscaping quote so much cheaper than another?
Almost always excavation depth, sub-base thickness and how the paving is bedded. Those three are invisible once the job is finished, so they are the easiest place to save money and the most expensive place to have saved it.
Should a quote itemise materials separately?
It helps. You want the paving named by product, the sub-base depth stated, and disposal, edgings and drainage listed rather than folded into one figure. Itemising is also how you compare two quotes that describe the same garden in different words.
How long should a new patio last?
Built properly on a compacted sub-base with a full mortar bed and correct falls, decades, with occasional repointing. Built on topsoil and blobs, it will usually announce its problems within two or three winters.
Depth, compaction, bedding, falls and aftercare. Five questions, asked while someone is standing in your garden with a tape measure, will tell you more about a landscaper than any brochure.
Gemzas Garden Maintenance and Landscaping covers Sevenoaks and takes on landscape projects as well as regular upkeep. The contact page starts a conversation about your garden.
