How Much Does Landscaping Cost in Burnaby? (2026 Price Guide)

We're Adam and Ben, two brothers running Northwood Landscaping with our own crew and equipment out of South Surrey, and we work across the Lower Mainland including Burnaby. Landscaping quotes vary wildly, and it is not because contractors are guessing. It is because 'landscaping' can mean a load of mulch or a full excavation and rebuild. This guide sorts it into budget bands so you can see where your project actually sits before anyone comes out.

Under $10,000: refresh and repair

This band buys a meaningful improvement to a yard that is fundamentally sound. Typically that means fresh sod on a front or back lawn, new garden beds with soil, plants and mulch, a modest walkway, a small patio in the 100 to 200 sq ft range, rock borders and cleanup, or a drainage fix at a problem downspout.

You are not moving much earth in this band. If the yard needs regrading, retaining or a new hard surface of any real size, this budget will get consumed by prep and you will be disappointed with what is left. Where this band shines is curb appeal: new sod, clean edges, a defined bed line and healthy plants change how a house reads from the street for surprisingly little.

$10,000 to $25,000: one real project done properly

This is where most single-purpose projects land. A 300 to 500 sq ft paver patio at the Greater Vancouver rate of $25 to $45 per square foot installed sits squarely in this band. So does a modest retaining wall with proper drainage behind it, a full lawn replacement with irrigation, a paver walkway and front entry rebuild, or a drainage system for a yard that floods.

Our advice for this band is to do one thing completely rather than three things partially. A properly built patio with the right base will outlast a larger patio built cheaply, and you can add to it later.

$25,000 to $50,000: a transformed area

Here you can combine elements. A typical project in this band might be a 400 sq ft patio, a set of steps, a low seat wall, new sod or turf, planting beds and basic landscape lighting. Or a retaining wall plus the usable terrace it creates, plus drainage. On a Burnaby lot with grade changes, this is often the realistic entry point for making a sloped backyard genuinely usable, because the retaining and drainage work has to happen before the nice part exists.

$50,000 and up: full yard renovation

Complete renovations start here and go well beyond it. This band covers excavation and regrading, engineered retaining, a large multi-level patio, extensive drainage, irrigation, turf or sod, mature planting, a fire feature, full lighting and finished details throughout. Design work and, where required, engineering are part of the budget.

There is no ceiling on this band, but there is a useful sanity check: on most Lower Mainland properties, a full exterior renovation lands in a range roughly comparable to a good kitchen renovation, and it delivers considerably more square footage of usable space.

How sloped Burnaby lots change the numbers

Burnaby has a lot of hillside. Slope affects a landscaping budget in three ways, and they compound.

First, retaining. Creating a flat area on a slope means holding back the soil above it. Walls over about 1.2 metres generally require a permit and engineered drawings, and any load above the wall such as a driveway or another wall can trigger engineering at lower heights too. That is a real line item, sometimes the largest one.

Second, drainage. Water moves downhill and it will find your new patio. Sloped sites usually need drain lines behind walls, catch basins on terraces and a clear plan for where the water discharges. Skipping this is the most expensive saving available.

Third, access and material movement. On a steep or narrow Burnaby lot, machines often cannot reach the back yard. Everything, spoil out and base stone in, moves by wheelbarrow or conveyor. That can add substantially to the labour hours on an otherwise ordinary project, and it is the most common reason two similar-looking yards price very differently.

What we see on Surrey, Langley and White Rock jobs

Working close to home gives us a clear picture of what actually drives cost. Clay subgrade is the constant: in Surrey and Langley we routinely excavate deeper than a textbook depth and add geotextile fabric because the ground under the topsoil is soft and wet for much of the year. Budgets that ignore that get eaten by settlement later.

On White Rock and South Surrey slopes the story is retaining and steps, exactly as it is on the Burnaby hillside. A backyard that looks like a simple patio project on paper often becomes a wall, a terrace and a stair run once we walk it, and we would rather tell you that at the estimate than discover it mid-build.

The third recurring one is water we did not put there: perimeter drains and downspouts discharging into the middle of the yard. Fixing that first is usually a few thousand dollars and it protects everything built afterward.

Sequencing a project in phases

Phasing works well when it is planned as one design and built in stages, and badly when each stage is improvised. The order we recommend is: grading and drainage first, then any retaining, then hard surfaces such as patios, walkways and driveways, then irrigation and lighting conduit, then sod or turf, then planting, then furnishings and features.

The reason is simple. Every stage on that list involves machines, trenching or heavy material moving across the yard. Installing a lawn before the patio means paying to repair the lawn. Running lighting after the patio means cutting into it. Even if you are only building phase one this year, have the whole plan drawn so we can leave conduit, drain stubs and access in the right places.

What to have ready before the site visit

A short list of what you want the space to do, which is more useful to us than a list of products. Photos or links of yards you like. A rough budget band from this article, so we can design toward reality instead of quoting something you were never going to build. Any survey, site plan or engineering documents you have. Knowledge of where your property lines, perimeter drains, downspouts, gas line and irrigation are, if you know. And an idea of your timing, including anything fixed like a party, a sale or a builder's schedule.

With those in hand, an estimate visit usually takes under an hour and produces a number you can rely on. Everything we build is backed by our 1-year workmanship warranty, so if something we built settles, shifts or fails within a year, we come back and fix it.

If you are trying to figure out which band your project belongs in, we will come out, walk the yard, and tell you honestly what your budget will and will not cover. The on-site estimate is free and your itemized written quote follows within 24 hours.