How much do artificial hedge panels cost?

How Size Can Impact Costs?

Artificial hedge and vertical garden panels do come in various sizes. Commonly, they come in 25cm x 25cm (10”x10”, 50cm x 50cm (20” x 20”), or 1m x 1m (40” x 40”). The smaller the panels are when you receive them, the more time and effort you need to spend clipping and joining them together when covering a larger area.

You may see a sticker price for a 50cm x 50cm artificial hedge fence panels and think it is less, however more often then not, you may end up paying a lot more than you thought. We break down the current costs, and impacts on cost for you below.

Cost Impact Of Smaller Squares

If you are engaging a professional installer, they may very well charge you more to cover the extra time spend connecting small panels together. As a general back of the envelope calculation if a trades person is charging you $80 per hours, the costs can be a lot more using either the 50cm or 25cm sections. 

For example if you have a fence that is 15m long and 2m high you would need 30m2 of hedging panels. If you use 25cm x 25cm sections (16 per 1m), that is over 480 small fiddly bits of imitation hedging you would need to connect. Let’s say 2 minutes per panel, that is nearly 960 minutes extra you spend building your artificial hedge wall. In financial terms, that could be around $1,280 extra in labour if you use a handyman.

If on the other hand, you choose to use 50cm x 50cm sections that is 4 times more panels that need to be joined than if you buy them as 1m x 1m sections. Again, in financial terms it could take you nearly 4 minutes per panel to join (remember they are twice the length of the 25cm panels), and you have 4 segments required to equate to a 1m x 1m section. Therefore, you would need to connect 120 small plant wall panels instead of just 30. 

Whilst not as tedious as using the really small 25cm panels, the time still adds up and could add at least 4 or 5 more hours to a similar job. Of course the 1m x 1m sections need to be installed as well, but the time saved in not having to worry about connecting the smaller panels can certainly add up. 

So why do people sell the smaller sections? Commonly Big Box retailers like Bunnings consider a range of issues such as instore shelf efficiency, ability to move items around a shop, and what is most profitable for them to handle. Larger boxes that can accommodate a 1m panel may attract additional fees to post to clients when you choose to order your artificial plants online.

Pricing Of Panels

Pricing, as we all knows varies time to time, and it is important for us to always be aware of pricing to ensure we get the best deal. As mentioned above, smaller squares often add hidden costs when installing. Let’s now consider actual pricing of products in store. We will consider 2 of the major players / brands in the artificial hedge wall space. For comparison, we will look at Bunnings vs Designer Plants on 2 artificial hedge / ivy options.

Artificial ivy Rolls

Bunnings currently sell this item as a 100cm x 300cm offer, at $70.68

Designer Plants currently offer two versions, depending on the leaf style chosen they are either $69.95 or $59.95

Designer Plants also has an active promotion whereby any orders over $500 attract free delivery and 10% off. For the fence section mentioned earlier of 15m x 2m, you would need 10 rolls, so you would be eligible for this discount. The pricing would be 

Bunnings 10 Rolls at $70.68, totalling $706.80 compared to Designer Plants at 10 artificial hedge roll of let’s take the more expensive version $69.95, so $699.95 less 10% and free delivery would mean you are at $629.95.

If you want your artificial plants delivered, based on a delivery to Melbourne you would look at $50 more from Bunnings on top of the already higher price.

We will now consider one of the most popular comparisons, being that of a more lush green wall pane, known at Bunnings as the “Boston Fern” and Designer Plants as the “Green Tropics”.

Bunnings sell a smaller section, being 50cm x 50cm for $36.90, or if buying 4 pieces to equal the same size as Designer Plants that is $147.60 per 1m x 1m section.

Let’s compare that to Designer Plants who sell the Green tropics panels for only $124.95 per 1m x 1m section.

Bunnings seemingly are out of stock at some stores, so you would need to also pay for delivery or hunt around for a store that has the same product in stock and available in the quantities you require.

Hint: Artificial Plants can vary over time in colour and appearance between batches so it is best to get all the same panels in one go to avoid this issue.

Based on needing 30m2 you would be looking at needing 120 small pieces from Bunnings or 30 from Designer Plants. The total costs on these would be as follows:

Therefore it would be nearly $1104 less to use Designer Plants on these panels and items.

Other Costs

Ensuring you choose the right installation equipment will also greatly assist you in ensuring the products are installed correctly, and last the test of time. Ensuring you use enough fixings is critically important to ensure that they do not fall off your fence, thereby resulting in you having to reinstall sections all over again.

Quality is also a key decision maker. You can read more about the quality details and guarantees of Designer Plants HERE. Both providers offer a 5 year warranty on panels based on their websites.