Not paying for garden work

The previous owners are legally obliged to fulfil their contract by paying in full, but I’d probably give him a hefty tip as a good will gesture.

I agree with this

I would pay them if they had done a nice job. But certainly you are under no legal obligation to do so and the previous owners are the ones he should pursue for payment if you are not willing or can't afford to make the gesture.

so the gardener wants you to pay half of someones elses mistake, so he pays nothing of someone elses mistake?

How does that make any sense?

This is work you didn’t ask to be done, was undertaken without your knowledge and a service you don’t want.

Whilst unfortunate for the Gardener, you can’t just turn up after 5-6 months with no prior warning and expect to be paid. The communication between the previous owner and Gardener is the issue. Pretty sure any legal action would stand firm with you.

Id be pissed off someone accessed your property without permission as well!

It's usually the previous owners who might do a goodwill because they might still get post sent to the old address or someone ask after them and then the new owners might feel more inclined to help.

The thing that would bother me most here is that someone has got into your property so easily while you were away. If he’s genuine, does he have garden gate keys?

Have you even checked whether he is genuine? If he had a regular contract, why did it take 5 months for him to turn up?

YANBU

But why should OP want "goodwill"? Goodwill for who? She wont be using the gardener again as she wants to do her own gardening, so why should she be out of pocket?

Goodwill is for companies that want people to keep using them.

There are some people who call themselves gardeners when all they do is cut off grass and pull out shrubs. No real skill or knowledge of plants.

You never asked for this 'benefit' so no I wouldn't pay. The gardener must have known the property was on sale and should have confirmed or texted the previous owners and they should have notified him of the sale, it's not like it happened overnight!
I wouldn't pay, obviously staying polite to them all but firm.

It's not that much whether you are BU or not. Legally this has nothing to do with you, you havent contracted the gardener, the previous owners did. They must pay the full bill.

Having a gardener is a luxury that many people gladly pay for and benefit from.

But lots of people are not in a situation to employ a gardener - whether they like to do the gardening themselves, they can't afford/don't see it as a priority in their household budget, or simply don't care if their garden is wild and overgrown.

You can't simply say that somebody has benefited and so they should just pay up anyway. As for those saying that it isn't that much money, you have no idea at all of how significant that amount of money is to another person. For all you know, OP could be needing to use a food bank to feed her charity - yet she's magically supposed to have a chunky sum set aside to shell out on unnecessary and unwanted gardening?!

YANBU

Wow, forget payment, as a keen gardener I'd be absolutely furious if someone had done my gardening. It's no mow May for a start! Tell him you want compensation for the damage he's done and he'll quickly vanish. I'm amazed he wouldn't check at the start of the season that the arrangement was still in place.

Are you sure the gardener isn't trying to con you? Mid May is VERY late for the first gardening visit of the year. They should have been doing the lawn since Easter at the latest. Likewise, there's been pruning, dead-heading etc to do for a few weeks now of the early flowering shrubs. "If" they are genuine, they should have realised that "someone else" has already mowed the lawn since they last did last Autumn!

It's a pretty common scam for "some" unscrupulous workmen to do work that no one has asked them to do and then they try to persuade you to pay them. Very easy if this gardener knew that someone new has moved into a house!

Years ago we found ourselves in a very similar situation. Someone ordered a service to be carried out on an item of property that we owned- we knew nothing about it until we got the bill. We refused to pay, the service provider took us to small claims and we lost. We had to pay.

You don’t have any obligation to pay anything. You didn’t have a contract with him.

Unless you live on a massive estate and we're talking a bill of hundreds, yabu.

Pick your battles. Just pay the twenty or thirty quid or whatever it is. You've got a half price lawn-mow, move on.

Apart from anything, I really don't think it's worth being this stubborn and difficult with a local gardener, of all people. All of your new neighbours will absolutely get to hear about it if the bill goes unpaid and it will colour opinions of you for a long time.

I've lived here for six years and I still remember the new window cleaner warning me about number 5 who had apparently refused to return Steve next doors battery charger 🤣 I've never had any issues with number 5 but I'd STILL be wary if he asked to borrow something!

I'd be quite happy to get home from a week away to find the grass cut. I think paying depends how much work has been done and what it cost. If they cut the grass and it was £40 and I was asked to pay £20 id pay. If it was lots of work and it was £200 and I'm expected to pay £100 I wouldn't pay.

Depends, do you want to use him in the future? There might be a time that you want help with the garden. Is it worth paying half and leaving it on good terms, in case you ever need him?

I’d pay half to keep the peace. It won’t be that much money and a bad reputation amongst the trades is quickly spread. My neighbours have pissed off a number of tradesmen, gardeners and window cleaners by disputing payments, paying late and generally being difficult. They recently commented how expensive everything seemed to have become, seemingly unaware their reputation precedes them and are now subject to the “arsehole tax” put on by everyone that now comes to quote.

How much is it, did he do a good job? If not much and a good job, I'd be tempted to pay half to keep him on side - good gardeners are hard to get, and I would prefer to have the option of him coming back to do hedge trimming, any big jobs etc. But that's only if you want to - no obligation on you at all I wouldn't say.

If only £20-30 I’d pay the man and send sellers an invoice making it clear they dick heads

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