Landscaping Costs

We decided to build a swing set for Ellie this summer. We did a bit of research and decided on a cool kit from Lowe's. Paul is excited to buy the lumber and build the thing himself. It comes with a cool toddler "rock" wall - perfect for learning stair climbing - and other features that can easily be updated to bigger and better attractions as Ellie outgrows them.

We bought the kit and brought it home. Ellie understood immediately and was so excited. She kept asking us to open the box for her:


We have a half acre lot; plenty of room for a swing set, right? Even a big wooden one? Well . . . it turns out that our backyard slopes downward. It's not enough to wreck your croquet game (the weeds do a good enough job of that) but it's not up to my standards of safety either.

And the old, wooden retaining walls back there are full of carpenter ants and yellow jackets. They've got to go.

So we had a few landscapers out to give us some bids. The first guy was perfect: a small, locally owned business, very friendly, and had some great ideas for how to replace the retaining walls and add a safe playpit for the swingset. For $15,000. We called the company that just does cheapo retaining walls, no landscaping, no playpits: $12,000. The third and fourth places never called us back. We're waiting on two more estimates, but I'm not optimistic. Retaining walls seem to be hugely expensive and a largely fixed price (the "stone" costs so much per square foot, wholesale). And we can really only (only!) afford about $10,000 right now. And by afford, I mean that we don't want to go any further into dept than that. Blast.

I really wanted to have the backyard fixed up: build a nice play area for Ellie, get rid of the rotting railroad ties, remove the overgrown landscaping, maybe even fence the yard in. But it seems that I'm either going to have to get a lot handier (and energetic!) or a lot richer.