Home Depot vs Your Local Landscape Supply Yard - Bulk vs Bags

What’s the Better Deal? Home Depot or Buying in Bulk?

There’s always a Home Depot or other box store near you, and while it may be a familiar name, is it actually a better deal? To many people’s dismay, Home Depot won’t have the better deals; instead, buying in bulk from local landscape yards/nurseries is the superior way to discover savings for any project. 

What’s more, working with your local landscape supplier will help build more meaningful relationships, potentially leading to more benefits down the line, while solidifying the local economy. Below, we will explore the nuances of purchasing decorative gravel in bulk from local suppliers and how that can save you money versus the large box stores with their rip-off prices. 

Bulk vs Bags

For a single bag or a single shovel, hitting up the Home Depot can do the trick. Small, generic purchases can be carried out largely without much issue. But for larger/more specific projects, Home Depot simply cannot compare to the customer service, the savings, and the ease of purchase when working with a trusted local supply yard, especially if they provide the excellent products from companies like DeFeo Materials. Let’s look at the math for bags versus bulk:

Depending on the quality of rock you’re after, 1 bag of river rock with 1-2” pieces with 0.5 cu. ft. per bag can cost $4 at the local yard and $6 at the Home Depot, you save about $2 per bag. This scales well:

• 1 wheelbarrow carries about 4 cubic feet of material, which means shopping local can save $16 across the 8 bags needed

• 1 pick-up truck holds around 20 bags, this bumps savings up to $40 per load

• A dump truck can get bulk discounts, which can further enhance your savings shopping local. With bulk buying, one can expect to save somewhere around $110 per dump truck load!

Local Landscape Yards and Nurseries - Supporting the Local Economy

A huge plus to working with a local landscape supply yard is that you are supporting the local economy. Likely, the owner and employees of said supply yard/nursery will live in town and, perhaps, can be a friend. This is drastically different from supporting the corporate conglomerate that is Home Depot, where your money gets whisked away out of the local economy never to be seen again by people without the passion for landscape projects.

Customer Service: How to Find a Trusted Landscape Supplier

Not only are you supporting the local economy, but you can expect to receive superior customer service when working with local, trusted landscape suppliers. The more personal relationship can be extremely beneficial to both parties and can drastically streamline the entire process.

Finding a local, trusted landscape supplier is crucial. To help find one, you can search online reviews, seek out word-of-mouth suggestions, try a few different suppliers, and look into what supply they have. For example, finding a supplier that carries DeFeo Materials' rock and stone catalog guarantees you a certain baseline of quality as well as excellent selection in the rock you can order. Plus, with a well-established local supplier relationship, you can also arrange for special orders to get otherwise unavailable material delivered. 

Large Box Stores like Home Depot

Part of the appeal of large box stores like Home Depot is the variety of products they have. While this is great sometimes, many times shoppers are quickly overwhelmed by the huge selection.

Customer Service: Wandering the Aisles

We’ve all experienced this phenomenon of wandering the aisles at your local Home Depot. The categories of supplies they cover is huge, but if you are looking for specific landscape supply materials, this isn’t great. Instead of wandering around the lighting aisles, the plumbing aisles, the automobile sections, your local supply yard can more instantaneously connect you with superior products for whatever your project calls for!

Concluding - Shop What is Best for Your Needs

For most projects, shopping your local landscape supply yard/nursery is the superior way to fulfill your material needs. Not only is connecting local a better relationship that can yield better pricing through bulk decorative gravel purchases, but you also, in turn, help fuel the local economy. What’s more, the quality of material is generally better and can be specifically curated for what you need. Local suppliers can be connected with sources like DeFeo Materials to pass on a great selection of materials, a great quality of materials, and competitive prices to you. Leave the impersonal, rip off days of Home Depot behind and find yourself a local supplier to take your landscape projects to the next level!