How Much Does Garden Planting Cost in the UK?

When we hand over a planting plan, the question that comes back most often is a nervous one: what is all of this going to cost me? It is a fair question, because plant prices are strangely opaque. A trip to the garden centre gives you a price for one lavender, but no sense of what a whole border adds up to, and no way of knowing whether you are paying a fair price for it.

So here are the real numbers, what plants cost in the UK in 2026, what a border actually adds up to, why two similar looking plants can differ wildly in price, and where the savings are.

What Individual Plants Cost

These are typical UK retail prices right now:

• Perennials – around £3 to £5 for a young plant in a 9cm pot, £8 to £15 in a 2 litre pot, and £15 to £25 in a 3 to 5 litre pot. So the same hardy geranium might be £4 small or £12 established, and within two seasons you cannot tell which was which.
• Shrubs – roughly £10 to £25 for the standard 2 to 5 litre sizes. Popular structural shrubs like hydrangeas, pittosporum and viburnum mostly sit in the £15 to £25 bracket.
• Ornamental grasses – £8 to £15 for the usual 2 litre pots, and grasses bulk up quickly, so small is a safe buy.
• Roses – around £10 to £15 for a basic potted rose, £25 to £30 for a named variety from a specialist grower. Bare-root versions of the same roses drop to roughly £15 to £20 in winter.
• Hedging – £20 to £60 per metre using young plants of common species like laurel, beech or hornbeam at 60 to 100cm. That is typically three to five plants per metre at a few pounds each. An instant 6ft hedge is a different purchase entirely: mature, root-balled plants cost several times as much, and a long run is a four-figure job rather than a few hundred pounds.
• Trees – from around £30 to £100 for a young tree, £100 to £300 for something with a bit of presence, and £500 to well over £1,000 for semi-mature specimens that arrive on a pallet. Species moves the price as much as size does.
• Bulbs – the cheapest colour in gardening. £5 to £10 buys 25 to 50 daffodils or tulips, and most come back every year.

What a Border Actually Adds Up To

The useful way to think about planting cost is per square metre, because that is how borders are planned. A full, layered border uses 5 to 9 plants per square metre, which at ordinary retail prices works out at £50 to £150 per square metre depending on plant sizes.

Here is a worked example. Take a 3 metre by 1.5 metre border, 4.5 square metres, planted at 7 plants per square metre, so around 30 plants:

• 3 structural shrubs – at £15 to £20 each, roughly £50
• 18 perennials – in 2 litre pots at £10 average, roughly £180
• 6 grasses – at £10 each, roughly £60
• 50 bulbs – layered underneath, roughly £15

That border costs about £300 in plants at full retail. Swap the 2 litre perennials for 9cm ones and it drops close to £180; upgrade to larger, instant plants throughout and it climbs past £500. Same border, same design, three different bills, which is why “how much does planting cost” has no single answer, but it does have predictable maths.

If someone plants it for you, allow a day of labour at £25 to £50 per hour depending on where you live, and expect a 10 to 20 per cent mark-up on plants a landscaper supplies. For a border this size, the plants remain most of the bill.

Why Two Similar Plants Cost Wildly Different Amounts

Plant pricing makes sense once you know what you are paying for: time. A plant’s price mostly reflects how long a nursery has looked after it.

• Size and age – a 3 litre plant is not a bigger product, it is the same plant plus two more years of nursery care. That is why buying small and waiting is the single biggest discount in gardening.
• Growing speed – slow growers cost more per size. This is why evergreens and topiary carry a premium: a cloud-pruned box has years of work in it.
• Fashion – trending plants spike in price. The moment a plant is all over Instagram, its price rises before the supply catches up.
• Where you buy – the same 2 litre perennial is often £12 at a garden centre, £7 to £9 from an online nursery, and less again at trade nurseries, which is where designers buy.

How to Spend Less on a Garden

• Buy bare-root, November to March – hedging, roses and trees sold without pots while dormant often cost half the potted price. A beech hedge that would be £800 in pots might be £300 bare-root. The plants look like sticks on arrival and catch up within a season.
• Buy 9cm perennials – a third of the price of 2 litre pots, and by the second summer the border looks identical.
• Shop the end-of-season sales – garden centres discount tired-looking perennials heavily in autumn. The tops look sad; the roots are fine; autumn is planting season anyway.
• Choose plants that multiply – hardy geraniums, alchemilla and most grasses spread or divide, so thirty plants quietly become fifty within a few years, free.
• Put the money where it shows – spend on the few structural evergreens and one good tree, and go small on everything herbaceous. Structure needs presence from day one; perennials do not.

Budgeting for Extra Costs

The most expensive plants in any garden are the dead ones. A £15 plant in the wrong place, a sun-lover in shade, an acid-lover in chalk, a thirsty plant in a dry bed, is £15 spent twice, because it has to be replaced, usually with the same mistake. When we redesign gardens, we regularly find hundreds of pounds of failed planting that a soil check would have prevented.

That is the real argument for planning before buying. Our planting plan service specifies every plant for your actual soil, light and conditions, with positions and exact quantities, so nothing is bought twice and nothing is bought to fail. And because we buy at trade nurseries, we can often source the plant list for less than you would pay at retail.

Quick Answers

How much does garden planting cost per square metre? – £50 to £150 per square metre for a full border at retail prices, depending on plant sizes.

How many plants do I need per square metre? – 5 to 9 for a full, layered look. As a rule of thumb per metre of border: four small plants, two medium, or one large.

When are plants cheapest? – Bare-root season, November to March, and the end-of-season sales each autumn. Both coincide with the best time to plant.

Is it cheaper to plant a garden myself? – You save the labour, plants cost the same at retail either way. Many of our clients take the middle route: a professional plan, planted themselves.

Why Working With a Designer Pays Off

Planting rewards a little planning more than any other part of a garden. Once you know the per-square-metre maths, the price of patience and the bare-root calendar, the same budget goes noticeably further.

It is also where we can save clients real money. We help our clients buy plants from UK nurseries at trade discounts, which we pass straight on to them. And because we source from specialist growers rather than the high street, we can find the plants a scheme actually calls for, the ones your local garden centre may never stock. That combination, the right plants and a better price on them, is a large part of why working with us pays for itself.

If you would like a plant-by-plant scheme designed for your actual garden, our online garden design service includes planting plans you or your gardener can work from directly. Book a free consultation to talk it through.