What developers should budget for landscaping on a townhouse project

Picture the last week before a townhouse development opens for viewing. The units themselves are finished — paint dry, benchtops in — but it’s the courtyards that decide how people feel walking through. Grasses catching the evening light. A run of clipped hedging giving each unit its own sense of privacy from the one next door. A shared entry that looks like somewhere you’d actually want to arrive home to, not just a driveway with a letterbox at the end of it. That feeling is what gets a buyer to stop scrolling and book a viewing — and it’s usually the last line item anyone budgeted properly for. But that finished, fully-grown-in feeling doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t happen for free.

We were involved with a project a while back, and the landscaping plan that was provided to us was embarrassing. The architect clearly had no clue about plants, and even the hardscaping detail was scarce. So in the end we re-drew it ourselves – a better design, and much clearer for the landscape contractor.

What’s actually included in a landscaping budget?

More than most developers assume going in. A realistic scope usually covers: design and consultancy fees, soil preparation and drainage (especially on a site that’s just had heavy machinery over it for months), planting itself, hard landscaping — paving, fencing, retaining where units step down a slope — plus irrigation for the establishment period and a maintenance plan for the first year or two while everything roots in.

Skip any one of those and it shows up later as a callback, a dying hedge in the sales photos, or a body corporate argument in year two.

How much should you actually set aside?

As a rough share of the total build cost, expect landscaping to sit somewhere in the 5-10% range for a townhouse or medium-density project — though it moves a lot with site difficulty, unit count, and how much of the site is shared versus private courtyard.

Split it two ways in your head: the shared, high-visibility areas (entries, common gardens, street frontage) and the private courtyards per unit. The shared areas do more of the emotional heavy lifting in a sale — they’re what a buyer sees first and what shows up in every marketing photo — so they’re rarely the place to cut corners first.

Where do developers usually get the numbers wrong?

Three places, consistently:

• Treating it as a finishing touch, not a line item. Landscaping gets budgeted last and cut first when a build runs over — right when it should be locked in early, alongside the architectural plans.
• Underestimating establishment costs. A garden that looks full and finished on handover day needs bigger, more mature stock and more irrigation than one planted small and left to grow in over a few years. Both are valid — but they cost differently, and the choice needs to be made deliberately, not by accident.
• No maintenance plan past settlement. A development that looks superb at the open home and patchy eighteen months later has usually skipped this. Body corporates budget for it eventually — better to plan for it from day one.

Is it worth budgeting for 3D renders too?

Almost always, yes — and it’s a smaller line than most developers expect. A render of the finished landscaping lets you market the lifestyle before a single plant goes in the ground, which matters enormously for pre-sales and off-the-plan buyers who are otherwise looking at bare dirt and a site plan.