Cut, fill and the cost of lorries
Moving soil within your own garden is cheap. Taking it away is not. A grab or skip load runs £220 to £320, and a modest slope can easily generate several loads once you start cutting into it.
That is why our first move on a sloping garden is to find somewhere useful for the material. Filling a low corner with soil that is already on site removes lorry loads from the quote entirely.
Holding the new level
Cutting a level is only half the job. Wherever the ground now steps up or down, something has to hold it: sleepers, a low block wall or a graded bank. Retaining starts around £120 per metre and is usually the difference between two quotes.
Skipping it is how you end up with soil creeping onto a new patio within a year.
Level, or terraced?
On anything more than a gentle fall, two well proportioned terraces linked by steps almost always beat one flat plane. You get real usable space, far less material moved and far less retaining, often for half the cost.
Access changes everything
A garden a mini digger can reach through a gate is a fraction of the price of the same garden with a metre wide side passage. Where there is no machine access the whole job is barrowed, and the labour reflects that.
Levelling price guide
Figures assume reasonable access. Hand worked gardens are quoted separately after a visit.