Fill the form below to receive a personalized consultancy by our expert team.
The short answer Commercial soft landscaping is the design, supply, planting and establishment of the living parts of a site: trees, hedges, shrubs, herbaceous borders, turf, wildflower areas and the soil underneath them. It is the opposite of hard landscaping, which covers paths, walls, kerbs and paving. For a commercial site in Kent, expect to …
Commercial soft landscaping is the design, supply, planting and establishment of the living parts of a site: trees, hedges, shrubs, herbaceous borders, turf, wildflower areas and the soil underneath them. It is the opposite of hard landscaping, which covers paths, walls, kerbs and paving.
For a commercial site in Kent, expect to budget roughly £35 to £90 per square metre for shrub and herbaceous planting, plus a further 10 to 20 per cent of the planting cost for the first year of establishment maintenance. The best planting window is November to March, because that is when bare root stock is available and cheapest.
The single biggest thing that decides whether your scheme still looks good in three years is not the plant list. It is soil depth and aftercare. Between 30 and 50 per cent of newly planted urban trees in the UK die within the first year, and underfunded aftercare is the reason most often cited.
Soft landscaping covers everything living on your site plus the growing medium that supports it. Hard landscaping covers the built and structural elements. Most commercial schemes need both, and most sites are quoted as a single package.
Here is the split in plain terms.
| Soft landscaping | Hard landscaping |
|---|---|
| Trees, whips and semi-mature stock | Paths, footways and kerbs |
| Native and ornamental hedging | Retaining walls and edging |
| Shrub and herbaceous borders | Car park surfacing and bays |
| Turf, seeded lawn and amenity grass | Steps, ramps and handrails |
| Wildflower and meadow areas | Fencing, gates and bollards |
| Bulb planting and seasonal displays | Drainage, gullies and channels |
| Topsoil, subsoil, mulch and tree pits | Street furniture and cycle stands |
If you are procuring both together, the phrase to use in your enquiry is hard and soft landscaping. Blue Harbour Estates delivers both across Kent, London and the South East, and we keep the soft landscaping and the ongoing grounds maintenance under one contract, which removes the usual argument about who is responsible when a shrub bed fails.
On a typical commercial site (office park, retail unit, industrial estate, school campus, housing scheme, sports ground) a soft landscaping package will usually cover:
That last item is the one clients cut when budgets get tight, and it is the one that decides whether the scheme survives.
Every site prices differently because access, ground conditions and plant sizes vary wildly. The figures below are indicative planning ranges for the South East in 2026, useful for setting a budget before a site survey, not a quote. Professional estimators price this work from Spon’s External Works and Landscape Price Book, now in its 45th edition.
| Element | Indicative planning range (2026, South East) | What moves the price |
|---|---|---|
| Planting plan and plant schedule | £750 to £3,000+ | Site size, planning conditions, whether a landscape architect is required |
| Ground preparation and decompaction | £8 to £25 per m² | Compaction, buried rubble, machine access |
| Imported topsoil to BS 3882, delivered | £45 to £75 per m³ | Grade, haulage distance, tipping access |
| Shrub and herbaceous planting, supplied and planted | £35 to £90 per m² | Plant size, planting density, species mix |
| Bare root native hedging | £8 to £18 per linear metre | Species, whip size, single or double row |
| Semi-mature tree, supplied and planted | £400 to £1,500+ per tree | Girth, root ball vs rootball-in-pit, guards, irrigation |
| Wildflower and meadow establishment | £3 to £8 per m² | Seed mix, whether topsoil stripping is needed |
| Mulch, 50 to 75mm | £6 to £12 per m² | Material type and delivery |
| 12 month establishment maintenance | 10 to 20% of the planting capital cost | Watering regime, visit frequency, replacement liability |
Two things reliably blow a soft landscaping budget in Kent. The first is discovering that the “topsoil” left by the main contractor is 100mm of compacted spoil sitting on crushed hardcore. The second is a watering bill nobody costed. Both are avoidable with a site survey before you sign.
For a broader breakdown of what a full grounds contract costs across the year, see our guide to commercial grounds maintenance costs in 2026.
Planting season drives both cost and survival rates. Bare root stock is only lifted and sold during the dormant season, roughly November to March, and it is significantly cheaper than the container-grown equivalent.
| Window | What to plant | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sept to Oct | Container-grown shrubs, turf, wildflower seed | Soil still warm, good root establishment before winter |
| Nov to Dec | Bare root hedging, whips, trees | The sweet spot in the South East. Residual soil warmth, adequate drainage |
| Jan to Feb | Bare root hedging, whips, trees | Reliable, widest nursery availability. Avoid waterlogged or frozen ground |
| Mar | Late bare root, container stock | Window closing. Rising drought risk for anything planted late |
| Apr to Aug | Container-grown only, if unavoidable | Highest failure risk and highest watering cost. Not recommended |
If you are planning a scheme for this winter, tender it now. Nursery stock for the popular native species gets committed early, and a September enquiry gives you a proper November start rather than a rushed March one.
This is the question worth answering honestly, because the industry does not talk about it enough.
Research on urban tree planting in England found mortality rates of 20 to 50 per cent for newly or recently planted trees, with the Forestry Commission citing around 30 per cent failing within 12 months in towns and cities. Annual mortality is highest in the first five years. The consistent finding across that research is that insufficient aftercare funding, not bad plant choice, is the primary driver.
Four failure points show up again and again on commercial sites:
This is the part most soft landscaping guides ignore, and in Kent right now it matters more than anything else on the page.
South East Water announced a Temporary Use Ban for Kent on 25 June 2026, and it came into force at 00:01 on 3 July 2026. It was extended to Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire from 25 July 2026. Demand peaked at 687 million litres a day on 24 June 2026, and rainfall from March to June was about half the normal level. The Environment Agency describes the South East as seriously water-stressed.
Here is what commercial property managers frequently get wrong. A Temporary Use Ban is not domestic-only. Under the Water Use (Temporary Bans) Order 2010, a “garden” is defined to include a public garden, a lawn, a park, a grass verge, an area of grass used for sport or recreation, and other green space. South East Water’s own guidance is explicit: a business using a hosepipe or sprinkler to water a garden on its premises is caught by the ban. An office cannot hosepipe its flowerbeds. A pub cannot hosepipe its beer garden. Breach is an offence under section 76 of the Water Industry Act 1991, carrying a fine of up to £1,000.
What you can still do on a commercial site under the current ban:
| Activity | Permitted? | Conditions |
|---|---|---|
| Drip or trickle irrigation | Yes | Must be fixed, not handheld, fitted with a pressure reducing valve and timer, delivering water to or below the soil surface with no run-off or misting |
| Watering trees, whips, saplings and hedging | Yes | Planted before the ban, within the last planting year, and only where a watering can is not reasonable |
| Watering potted plants on commercial premises | Yes | Pots are not classed as a “garden” |
| Watering a sports pitch | Partly | Active playing strip only, not the whole grounds, and outside peak hours of 8am to 10am and 5pm to 9pm |
| Watering from a water butt, borehole, well or private lake | Yes | The ban only applies to mains water supplied by South East Water |
| Hosepipe or sprinkler on general amenity grass and borders | No | Restricted |
The practical takeaway for anyone specifying soft landscaping in Kent this year is straightforward. Design for a site that may not be allowed a hosepipe. That means drought-tolerant species selection, deeper mulch, proper rooting depth, rainwater harvesting where the roof area allows, and a fixed drip irrigation system with a timer and pressure reducing valve rather than a hose reel and a hopeful maintenance operative. It also means planting in the November to March window, when establishment does not depend on summer irrigation at all.
Restrictions are reviewed continuously, so check the current position with South East Water before you plan works. But the direction of travel in the South East is clear, and a planting scheme designed in 2026 should assume restricted water at some point in its first three summers.
If you only take one thing from this article into your next tender document, make it this checklist. A specification that says “plant shrubs and maintain in good condition” is unenforceable. These references make it enforceable.
Note that under JCT contracts since the 2005 suite, the phrase “defects liability period” has been replaced by “rectification period”. Make sure your landscape establishment period is written separately, because a 6 or 12 month rectification period on the build does not automatically give you two growing seasons of plant aftercare.
Only if you design it to. This trips up a lot of schemes.
Under the statutory biodiversity metric, ornamental and introduced shrub planting sits in the low distinctiveness bands. A beautifully designed ornamental border around a car park will score very little. Native species-rich hedgerow, wildflower grassland and native woodland planting score considerably higher.
So if your site carries a Biodiversity Net Gain obligation, the soft landscaping scheme is where you win or lose the units, and the 30 year management commitment that comes with it lands squarely on your grounds contractor. We cover this in detail in our guide to biodiversity net gain maintenance and who manages the habitat for 30 years.
Ask four questions and you will filter the field quickly.
Because we already hold grounds maintenance contracts across Kent, London and the South East, we can carry your planting scheme straight from installation into an ongoing maintenance regime without a handover gap. That is usually the difference between a scheme that looks better every year and one that looks worse.
The bare root window opens in November and nursery stock gets committed early. If you have a site in Kent, London or the South East that needs a soft landscaping scheme this winter, get in touch for a free site survey and quote. We will walk the site, check your soil, and give you a specification you can actually tender against.
About the author: Written by the Blue Harbour Estates operations team, who deliver grounds maintenance, arboriculture, winter maintenance and hard and soft landscaping across Kent, London and the South East from our base in Gillingham.
