I’m Grant, and I’ve spent the better part of 20 years knee-deep in gardens and building sites around Wellington — Johnsonville, Tawa, Khandallah, wherever the work takes me that week. My sister-in-law, who lives up the hill in Johnsonville, is the sort who wants the whole section sorted by Christmas: new deck, retaining wall, replanted borders, the lot, all at once. I love the enthusiasm, but every time she raises it I sit her down with a cup of tea and a calendar, because trying to do everything in one hit is how people blow their budget and end up with half a job. The single best money-saving trick I know isn’t a cheaper material or a mate’s-rates tradie — it’s spreading landscape staging across a year and lining each stage up with the right season. Here’s how I map it out.
Why the calendar matters more than the quote
Tradies are busiest, and priciest, in the run-up to summer. Everyone in Wellington wants their deck finished for the first fine long weekend, so from about September the good builders and landscapers are booked solid and quotes creep up. Book the same job for late autumn or winter and you’ll often get a keener price and a tradie who can actually start when they say they will. Staging the work also means you pay in chunks you can budget for, instead of one gut-punch invoice. And some jobs simply go better in certain seasons — get that order wrong and you end up redoing them.
How I stage a section over four seasons
This is the rhythm I suggest for a Johnsonville section, though it holds for pretty much anywhere in the lower North Island:
| Season | What to book | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Summer | Planning, quotes, small DIY jobs | Watch how the sun and the southerly track across your section so everything else gets sited right |
| Autumn | Trees, hedges, shrubs — the planting stage | Best planting window in our climate; soil’s still warm, rain’s coming, so plants establish without constant watering |
| Winter | Retaining walls, drainage, concrete prep | Tradies have more room in the diary, and drainage problems show themselves in a wet Wellington winter so you fix the right thing |
| Spring | Decks, fences, paving | Finished in time to enjoy over summer, but booked back in autumn before the rush hits |
What $25,000 actually buys across a year
Say you’ve got $25,000 to spend over a year on a tired Johnsonville section. I’d split it something like this, all including GST:
- Autumn planting and soil: $2,000 to $4,000 including GST for trees, shrubs and a few loads of compost.
- Winter drainage and a small retaining wall: $8,000 to $12,000 including GST.
- Spring deck or fence: $8,000 to $12,000 including GST.
- Contingency: hold back at least 10% of the total, because our sloping sections always throw up a surprise once the digger’s in.
That contingency line is not optional. On a Wellington hill section I’ve never once seen a project where the ground behaved exactly as expected — old drainage nobody knew about, rock where the plan said clay, that sort of thing.
How to phase the work without paying twice
The trap with staging a job is redoing something because the sequence was wrong. A few rules keep me out of that:
- Wet work before pretty work. Drainage and retaining go in before you plant or pave over the top, or you’ll be digging up new hardscaping to fix something underneath it.
- Run the services early. Lay conduit for outdoor lighting or an irrigation line while a trench is already open for the retaining wall or drainage.
- Keep one plan. Even if three different tradies handle three different stages across the year, work off a single sketch so the levels and drainage all agree by the time the deck goes down.
Getting comparable quotes for each stage is its own skill — different tradies price scope differently, and it’s easy to compare apples with oranges. I’ve written up how I do it in how to get honest quotes from regional tradies, worth a read before you ring anyone.
Don’t forget the consent lead time
If any stage needs a building consent — a retaining wall over 1.5 metres, or a higher deck — factor the processing time into your calendar. Councils can take several weeks, so a consent applied for in winter clears the way for a spring build instead of holding it up. The Building Performance site explains what needs consent and roughly how long it takes, and it’s worth checking early on building.govt.nz rather than discovering a hold-up once you’re ready to start digging.
Questions I get asked about staging a Wellington garden
What’s the cheapest time of year to do outdoor work in Wellington? Late autumn and winter are usually cheapest, because tradies are less busy than in the spring rush before summer, so you often get keener quotes and a firmer start date for drainage, retaining walls or concrete prep.
How much contingency should I budget for a landscaping or section development project? Keep back at least 10% of your total budget, and more on a sloping or hill section like most of Johnsonville, because excavation on Wellington ground almost always uncovers something unexpected.
Should I stage a garden over a year or do it all at once? Staging across a year usually costs less and lets you pay in manageable chunks, as long as the drainage and retaining work — the structural, wet-work stage — happens before the planting and paving, so nothing has to be dug up and redone.
Do I need a building consent for a deck or retaining wall? In New Zealand, a retaining wall over 1.5 metres or a raised deck can trigger a consent requirement, and council processing can take several weeks, so it pays to check building.govt.nz and apply well before your planned build season.