You just got the proposal back, and the number is bigger than you expected.
You want the whole thing. The patio, the deck, the plantings, the lighting. But looking at that total, your brain starts doing math.
Maybe you don’t have to do it all at once. Maybe you could handle one piece now and the rest later. Maybe you could even get a separate quote for part of it and save some money.
That instinct is completely reasonable, and phasing a landscape project is often exactly the right call.
But there’s an important difference between phasing your landscape project in the right order and splitting it up in a way that ends up costing more than doing it all at once would have.
The difference usually comes down to information most homeowners have no way of knowing, because it lives in the construction sequencing rather than in the design.
Here’s what that looks like in practice.
What Happens When a Deck Gets Built Before the Patio
A homeowner reached out to Northern Virginia Landscaping for a project that included both a deck and a patio. We put together a proposal for the full scope, and the patio portion came in around $35,000.
A few months later, she got back in touch and asked us to revisit the project. When we arrived at the property, the deck was already built.
She’d hired a different contractor for that portion, someone a neighbor had recommended and spoken highly of. That was a sensible move on paper.
The complication was that the neighbor’s project had been a very different type of build, and she’d shared our conceptual design drawing with them as a reference. Conceptual drawings show intent and layout. They aren’t engineered construction documents, and they don’t specify the structural details a builder needs.
Nobody involved was trying to cut corners. But the deck kept failing inspections because hardware connections, post placement, and bracing hadn’t been defined anywhere. Those decisions got made on the fly. By the time the deck was finished, it was larger than originally planned, and the steps had shifted position.
That meant the patio now had to extend farther out, which meant it needed a supporting retaining wall that wasn’t in the original design.
And that’s where the real cost showed up.
When we quoted the patio the first time, we planned to excavate with machines. An excavator for the bulk of the work, a small Bobcat for the tighter areas. That excavation would have taken about a day.
With the deck built, the finished ceiling sits too low for an excavator to fit underneath, and the support posts block a Bobcat from maneuvering through the work area.
So all of it has to be done by hand. Excavation that would have taken a day now takes closer to a week, and every load of dirt gets hauled out by wheelbarrow instead of by machine.
The patio that was $35,000 came back at nearly $60,000.
She saved roughly $10,000 on the deck, and it added about $25,000 to the patio.
“They didn’t realize how all the pieces were interwoven into an overall price,” Ibi Pashaei, founder of Northern Virginia Landscaping, explains. “It’s really hard to see the downstream effects of a decision when you don’t work in construction every day.”
Other Ways Split Projects End Up Costing More
The deck and patio situation is a clear example, but this pattern shows up in a lot of forms.
A pool set 10 inches too low
A homeowner hired a pool contractor who set the finished elevation of the pool without factoring in what it would mean for the surrounding yard. They dug about 10 inches deeper than necessary.
Once that elevation was locked in, the entire surrounding grade had to accommodate it. The fix required 40 feet of retaining wall to hold everything in place.
Raising the pool by less than a foot would have eliminated $20,000 to $30,000 of wall.
A new fence installed at the wrong time
A client had a fence installed between our estimate and our start date, which is a completely normal thing to do when you’re improving your property.
Our estimate was built around existing site conditions, including a side yard gate wide enough to run a small Bobcat through. The new gate measured 30 inches. We needed 36.
That left two options. Take apart a brand new fence for about $1,500, or complete the excavation by hand for roughly $8,000 more.
A driveway repaved just before construction
Repaving the driveway is usually one of the more satisfying home improvements. It just works better at the end of a landscape project than at the beginning.
Once the dump trucks start arriving and machines roll across a surface that’s a week old, everyone spends the project protecting something that could have been installed after all the heavy work was done.
The thread connecting all of these is the same. Landscape work looks like separate line items on a proposal, and there’s no obvious reason to think one choice would ripple into another.
“People tend to think things are separated because construction isn’t their field,” Ibi says. “Unless you’re a general contractor with relevant experience, you can end up making a decision without the information that would tell you it’s a costly one.”
Phase a Landscape Project the Right Way
None of this means you have to do everything at once. Plenty of our clients phase their projects over months or years for budget reasons, and it works beautifully when it’s sequenced properly.
The rule that governs almost everything is to work from the farthest point of the property back toward the front.
Backyard first, then the sides, then the front yard.
Driveways, front walkways, and front landscape lighting come last, because every piece of equipment and every load of material has to travel across that ground to reach the rest of the property.
Demolition and excavation happen early, before anything finished goes in.
A good phasing plan also looks ahead to things you might want down the road.
If there’s any chance you’ll add a hot tub, sauna, or outdoor kitchen in a few years, we run conduit for it now while the ground is already open. That’s a few hundred dollars during construction versus a few thousand to dig everything up again later.
Sometimes the piece you most want to do first isn’t the piece that should be done first, and that’s worth talking through openly.
“Somebody might really want to replace the driveway, and they also want the back patio, but the budget only covers one right now,” Ibi says. “The honest answer is that the driveway should come last, because we have to move machines in and out and we don’t want to damage something brand new.”
That’s not us dictating the order. It’s blending what matters most to you with what we know about sequencing, so you’re not paying twice for the same ground.
Why Staying With One Contractor Matters More Than Having a Plan
A lot of homeowners understandably put their confidence in the plan itself. Get a solid master plan, hire whoever fits the budget for each phase, and everything should line up.
The challenge is that no construction project goes exactly according to plan. Materials become unavailable. Something unexpected turns up underground. Site conditions shift with the weather.
“You need somebody that’s adaptable to a plan, not just somebody that has a plan,” Ibi says.
When a contractor is responsible for one piece, they’ll solve problems in whatever way works best for their scope. If a buried gas line forces them to relocate something, they’ll move it to the spot that makes sense for the work in front of them. They aren’t weighing whether that new location blocks equipment access in phase three, because that isn’t their project.
You’re the only one holding the whole picture. And the technical details that would help each new contractor protect the later phases are exactly the details that are hardest to pass along secondhand.
The Cost That Never Shows Up on an Invoice
There’s a cost in all of this that no proposal accounts for.
When you’re coordinating multiple contractors, you become the general contractor. You’re fielding the calls, making judgment calls between competing recommendations, and absorbing the friction when two pieces don’t fit together.
“Do you want to be present for your kids and family, or do you want to have a conversation about why the contractors are horrible every night for the next three months?” Ibi asks. “People don’t weigh that in the equation. It’s not only a financial thing. It’s an emotional strain.”
There’s a line from investor Howard Marks that captures the dynamic well: the less risk you perceive, the more risk there actually is.
When a project looks simple enough to split into pieces, that’s often the moment there’s the most riding on getting the sequence right.
What We’d Tell You Either Way
If you’re looking at a proposal and thinking about phasing, that’s a good conversation to have. Tell us your budget and your timeline, and we’ll help you sequence it so each phase sets up the next one instead of complicating it.
And if you decide to work with a different company, we’d give you the same advice we’d give a friend. Pick one team and stay with them through the whole project.
Not because we think we’re the only ones capable of good work. But because the savings from splitting a project up tend to reappear later as a bigger number, and usually at the least convenient moment.
Contact Northern Virginia Landscaping to talk through your project.
We’ll walk your property, talk through what matters most to you, and put together a phasing plan that fits your budget without setting you up for a much larger bill down the road.