Landscaping Cost in Scottsdale, AZ

Landscaping labor runs $50 to $100 an hour, according to a national cost guide that separates physical labor from design work. The hourly rate is the number people ask about first and the one that predicts a bill least reliably, because an hour of digging through caliche is not the same hour as an hour of planting into prepared soil. Companies often quote the job rather than the hour for anything larger than a repair. Hourly rates do matter for small work: a valve swap, a line repair, a controller that needs reprogramming. The rate may carry a one hour minimum, and travel and a trip charge may be billed on top.

Basic landscaping work runs $4.50 to $12 per square foot, and a full tear out or an outdoor kitchen build can reach $40 per square foot, according to a national cost guide. That is a wide band because the square foot is doing different work at each end: gravel and a few plants at the bottom, demolition, grading, irrigation and hardscape at the top. The national average for a landscaping project in the same guide is $3,517. A yard with 2,000 square feet of plantable area is not 2,000 square feet of cost at a single rate.

A front yard landscaping project runs $1,500 to $5,000, according to a national cost guide, which contrasts that with a full backyard renovation at $15,000 to $50,000. The gap is structural, not a matter of taste: a front yard is mostly plants, beds and a fresh surface, while a backyard often adds a patio, a wall, a gas line and lighting. In Scottsdale a front yard also carries the street facing work, which is where an HOA and the city both have an opinion. The cheapest version of a front yard is a plant and gravel refresh. The expensive version moves the driveway, the walkway and the grade. Both ends are real, and the gap between them is the scope you choose.

Design fees run $50 to $150 an hour, with an average near $100 an hour, or $1,934 to $7,267 for a design project, and a national cost guide puts the average design project at $4,588. Whether the design is a separate fee depends on the company. Some fold it into the installation and some bill it on its own, and the ones that bill it separately often hand over a drawing the client owns. A design that nobody can build is a drawing, and a design drawn without a site visit is a guess with a title block.

Paver installation runs $8 to $25 per square foot, and a typical patio lands between $2,400 and $7,000, with $3,800 as the average for a 280 square foot patio, according to a national cost guide. Labor is $50 to $80 an hour or $4 to $11 per square foot in that guide. Site access can move the number as much as the paver choice does: a backyard reachable only through a side gate costs more to build than the same square footage with a driveway next to it, because every pallet and every bucket of base material is carried. Patterns with small pieces and tight curves cost more in labor than a running bond. A simple grid pattern is often the lowest cost way to cover ground.

Flagstone runs $15 to $30 per square foot installed, with a typical patio between $750 and $8,400 and an average of $4,500 for 300 square feet, according to a national cost guide. How it is set changes the price: dry laid over a compacted base is the cheapest, mortar set over an existing slab is in the middle, and wet set over a new concrete base is the most expensive. Flagstone is natural stone, so thickness varies and the labor is in fitting it. It also stains if the wrong sealer goes on it.

A retaining wall runs $40 to $360 per linear foot depending on height, with installation labor at $15 to $50 per square foot, and the average project lands near $6,083, with most between $3,191 and $9,202, according to a national cost guide. Height is the dominant variable: the same guide puts a 2 foot wall at $40 to $200 per linear foot and a 6 foot wall at $360 per linear foot. In Scottsdale the price has a second component that national cost pages often leave out. Every retaining wall requires engineered plans submitted to and approved by the city, so there is an engineering and review cost before a block is laid. Budget for that step separately from the wall.

Artificial turf installed runs $15 to $19 per square foot, according to This Old House, with materials at $2 to $8 and labor at $4 to $12 per square foot. A national cost guide puts a turf job at $3,244 to $8,714, with an average of $5,783. A putting green is a different product and a different price: $15 to $40 per square foot installed, or $3,500 to $9,000 for the job, with the per square foot figure falling as the green gets larger. The base is most of the labor, and skipping it can make a turf job look bad by year 3.

Xeriscape runs $5 to $20 per square foot installed, or $5,000 to $24,000 for a project, with an average of $17,000, according to a national cost guide. The same guide prices desert style xeriscaping at $8,000 to $18,500. The word covers a spectrum. At the low end it is gravel, a few native plants and a drip line. At the high end it is sculpted mounding, specimen cacti, boulders, lighting and a hardscape path. What separates the two is not the plants, it is the earthwork and the stone. The cheapest xeriscape is gravel over dirt, and it looks like it.

A sprinkler repair runs $137 to $422, with an average of $278, and repair labor is $50 to $100 an hour, according to a national cost guide. Many companies have a 1 hour minimum and bill in 15 or 30 minute increments after that, so a 20 minute fix is billed as an hour. A full system replacement is $1,500 to $4,000 in that guide. What drives the bill is not the part: a valve is cheap, and finding the valve under 4 inches of gravel is the work. If several zones have failed at once, the controller or the main line is the likely cause and the repair is one job, not five. Say which zones failed and in what order, because that narrows it fast.

A drip system runs $200 to $850, or $0.50 to $5 per square foot, with an average of $350, according to a national cost guide. Above ground residential drip sits at $0.50 to $3 per square foot, subsurface at $2 to $5, and converting an existing sprinkler zone to drip costs $300 to $1,200 per zone. A full sprinkler installation is a bigger number: $1,636 to $3,595, with an average of $2,549, priced at $0.20 to $1 per square foot of lawn, according to a national cost guide. Conversion can be the better buy here, because the trench and the valve box already exist. A new system makes sense when the old one has failed in several places.