I swear every contractor in Seattle is out to rip you off... I too tried to get someone in to do a little landscaping last week. All I wanted them to do was areate and seed my lawn... 300-600$ and they couldn't actually be bothered to show up on schedule. So I rented a aerator and ended up doing my and neghbors lawn for 65 bucks plus the cost of seed. 2 hrs of work for 300 bucks of work gotta be kidding me.
Well, the key element is a rock wall that spans the 65-foot yard, and is about 3-feet high. So there's heavy equipment needed... three-quarter-minus gravel base... tearing down the fence to get the heavy equipment and rock into the yard, and then rebuilding the fence when they leave... But all of that was only $9k. The problem was replacing the tiny decrepit front lawn with semi-permeable stone pad that I can park the RV on... And that's gonna be $23k. But still... a house for $40k... wow...