I am in a landscape management company. For an assignment, we did a bid on a landscape. The landscape was on a nice home, with lots of flower and shrub beds. I did the numbers, and the cost of maintaining that landscape came to around $40,000. That is why people do it themselves.

The lawn care was only around $6,000. Cleaning the paved areas was $900-but mostly because this house had a parking lot. The most expensive aspect of this were the annual beds, a lot because you have to buy annual flowers. That was over $15,000. Perennials were another large expense–$8,000–maintenance only, no new plants. Another large expense was mulch. So my gardening tip of the day–

Lawn is cheap and not hard to maintain with the right equipment. Perennial and annual beds are pretty but expensive. Paved area is the easiest to maintain.

That is why we are drowning in lawn. Although for real low maintenance switch to patios, and vigorous groundcovers.

One more thing–I have the hardest time spelling ‘perennial’ and ‘varieties.’ I’m constantly using them too. I’m glad I have good spellcheckers, but someday I hope to actually learn how to spell.