Landscapers & Landscape Gardeners in Dorking, Surrey

Most people searching for landscapers in Dorking are not looking for a gardener. They want a team that can take a tired, badly drained or unusable plot and rebuild it properly - levels, drainage, hard landscaping, planting and lighting - and then still be reachable in three years. This guide sets out how that work actually runs in RH4, RH5, what it costs, and how to tell a proper landscaping company from a two-man crew with a mini digger.

The ground you are building on in Dorking

Dorking sits between the North Downs and the greensand ridge, which means slope, chalk, sand and clay all within a few miles. Box Hill side gardens are steep and free draining; the low ground towards the Mole is heavy and wet.

Typical Dorking plots and what they need

Period property around the town centre and Deepdene, large hillside gardens towards Ranmore and Westcott, and rural plots out to Mickleham and Brockham with views worth designing the whole garden around.

Before we price anything we establish four things: where the water goes, how much the ground moves, what the levels really are, and what can physically get to the back garden. Every cost surprise in landscaping comes from one of those four being guessed at.

What a full garden build actually includes

• Clearance, protection of retained trees and setting out from a measured survey
• Groundworks: excavation, muck away, decompaction and land drainage
• Retaining structures - founded, reinforced and drained, not stacked sleepers
• Natural stone or porcelain terraces on a full sub-base with correct falls
• Steps, paths, edging and levels resolved so the garden is comfortable to walk
• Irrigation, power and lighting first-fix before any surface goes down
• Soil improvement, planting at proper densities, turf or wildflower seeding
• Timber structures - pergolas, screens, garden rooms - built by our own joiners

What landscaping costs in Dorking

As a guide rather than a headline figure: a well-built stone or porcelain terrace with drainage, edging and lighting usually starts from about £15,000. A wider scheme with retaining, steps, lawn and full planting typically falls somewhere between £35,000 and £70,000. A complete garden transformation with a timber structure, outdoor kitchen or garden room generally sits between £70,000 and £150,000. Slope, access and ground conditions move those figures more than material choice does.

Please treat every figure here as an indicative guide range based on projects we have completed, not a quotation. The final price depends on access, ground conditions, levels, drainage and specification, and is only confirmed after a site visit.

Access, programme and living with a build

Hillside sites need careful plant selection and sometimes winching or conveyor work. Rural plots have space but soft ground needs protecting.

A garden of this size is normally six to fourteen weeks on site. We work in one continuous programme with our own teams rather than disappearing to another job midway, and you get a named contact, a weekly update and a fixed price that does not move unless you change the brief.

Choosing between landscapers in Dorking

• Ask what goes under the paving - depth of sub-base, type of bedding, and how falls are set
• Ask who is actually on site: employed teams or subcontracted crews changing week to week
• Ask for two local addresses you can look at that were finished three or more years ago
• Check the quote separates groundworks, hard landscaping, planting and structures
• Check for public liability cover, a written guarantee and a realistic start date
• Be suspicious of a price given without anyone measuring levels or looking at drainage

Design and build, rather than design then hope

We draw the garden and then build it. That matters because the person specifying a retaining wall is the person who has to make it stand up, and because nothing gets designed that we cannot detail, source and deliver at the price quoted.

Where we work around Dorking

We design and build across Dorking (RH4, RH5) and the surrounding villages, including Westcott, Brockham, Mickleham, Ranmore, Holmwood, Capel and Leatherhead. Being local matters in landscaping: we know which streets cannot take a grab lorry, which ground floods and which merchants can get stone here on time.

On steep Surrey Hills gardens we resolve levels with stepped terraces rather than one tall wall. It costs less, looks better and is far more stable on this ground.