To think £50 is a bit steep for an hours gardening work?

[FlamingGalar]

Ok, so there was two of them so £25 per man hour - but this still seems a bit over the top cost wise to me. I am quite prepared to be told I am being unreasonable though as I really have no idea what the going rate for a gardener is!

I have always wanted to have a lovely well maintained garden and really tried to keep on top of it myself. It's been a difficult few years and working on the garden has been low on my priority list. This year I thought, sod it, I'm going to treat myself (and the family) to a bit of help in the garden, despite having to make cut backs to afford it.

We agreed on a price of £50 per visit to maintain the garden every two weeks for the next few months. It's a fairly large garden so I thought fair enough, it's probably going to take them a while to get through everything - loads of mature shrubs, bushes etc. However, they arrived for the first time this morning at around 8 am and they were gone by the time I got back from the school run at 9. I was a bit put out if I'm honest because for £50 quid I was expecting a good couple of hours at least. I wouldn't mind so much if the whole garden had been sorted, but only the left side was tended to.

WIBU to send the guy an email saying I'm not happy about the cost or is £25 per hour not unreasonable for a gardener in the London suburbs? I'm also very aware that we did agree on a price for the job and not a by the hour tariff (silly me!). I can't work out if I'm being a total skinflint or not. They don't have any formal qualifications as far as I know BTW

My gardens aren't small, aren't big either. 1 hour every week is enough to mainly keep on top of things with ad hoc extra hours here and there for specific jobs.

A degree in landscape gardening. Really

I too don't think they thought you'd be back so soon.

Hope you don't mind a quick hijack op but I am looking for a regular gardener in Liverpool if anyone can recommend.

Max £12-£15 per hour around here - SE.

If anyone can recommend a gardener at those sort of prices in the Nottingham area too that would also be appreciated! We have an enormous garden and I need a whole day every 2 weeks (at least). I had just assumed £20-£25 was the going rate.

Before you employ any gardeners, I'd check out their qualifications, and then do a bit of sanity testing - can they actually identify the plants in your garden (fairly basic requirement!), do they know when and how to prune shrubs, what would they do on a typical visit to your garden at different times of the year, etc.

Obviously, mowing a lawn needs rather less knowledge, but I wouldn't trust Jo Bloggs to get out secateurs and chop things back at random.

I've found a lovely lady on good old Mumsnet who seems great - well qualified and really seems to know her stuff. She also doesn't charge £25 per hour!

Thank you all so much for your advice.

You gave them an inch the first time they came and they took a mile!

I do a bit of gardening and charge £15 an hour, £12 maybe. That's in London. I'd be a jobbing gardener: I'm knowledgable, have plenty of practical experience and know my Latin names, but I'm not qualified. I have no overheads and get cash in my hand. There's a big difference between me and a company outfit where there are much higher overheads and dead time between jobs. If the gardeners are qualified and experienced £50 sounds fair. The big landscaping and garden maintenance company round here charges £650 a day for two men. If they are not doing a good job though, then get rid of them.

Bookmarking. It's useful to get an idea of what people pay as I'm looking for this too. Hope they agree to come back and do the job fully.

While we're on the subject, can anyone recommend a gardening service that covers Bicester? Hayfever is making me useless this year. 20 minutes in the garden equals 3/4 days of sneezing and awful itchy eyes!

Who is this gardener? Alan Titchmarsh? I would certainly expect some amazing gardening skills for that price!

They ignored my email about finishing the job, Everything so I sent them another one telling them not to come back - they replied to that one!

Mamma I think you're absolutely right about giving them an inch, cheeky feckers.

wurly, they were not a big maintenance company - just a small family outfit. I don't feel they were worth £25 an hour. In the area of the garden they did work on, there is still obvious bind weed and dead parts of shrubs they didn't prune off. To be honest, I think they know very little about gardening and thought it was an easy way to make a quick buck.

Did you pay them for doing half a job? I'd have asked when they were coming back to do the rest saying I'd be happy to pay as agreed for doing the work promised. Before I fired them!

I've been ripped off by too many gardeners so we just do it all ourselves now. I've had to get tough as they take you for a mug. It goes without saying that there are good quality value for money gardeners out there but they're hard to find.

We were paying £15 every 2 weeks for someone to do maintenance. Turned out to be a 15 minute law cut and occasional cutting back when really overgrown. They wouldn't even put weed killer down. More than one gardening firm so that's just the going rate. One guy charged me £200 to 'redo' my front garden, spent a day (if that) ripping everything out including things id asked to keep and cut back, planted a few weedy poor quality plants that soon died and left it at that. I felt really ripped off and we still used his 'maintenance service' for ages. Muggins!

Yes Zen I paid the full £50. I clearly do need to toughen up a bit but I really couldn't be bothered with all the trouble. I've got too much other stuff going on at the moment!

I'll be more savvy next time though.

Just to add another view, I've spent a couple of years trying to get someone to do maintenance gardening in Hertfordshire and am currently paying £22 per hour to get it done.

First gardener was about £17 per hour but stopped coming (and is still actively a gardener and never explained why he stopped - we paid on time!). Another gardener took down a tree for us cheaply but then wanted an extortionate fee for clearing the garden. Another gardener was £20 for the 1st hour, £10 thereafter but it took him six weeks to come around the first time - his other love was carpentry and I just don't think he was interested. Someone else said he was going on holiday so couldn't do regular maintenance for us - even though I wanted it done over a period of months.

So we've ended up with a firm of 'lady gardeners' who charge £22 per hour. I think they mostly do elderly people's/lone women's gardens, so as it's a bit of a niche they charge more. Frankly I don't care - we don't have lots of money but I just want two hours work done fortnightly over the summer while I'm heavily pregnant.

Would prefer cheaper, but in this case I'm paying for reliability.

Hi, I am a gardener and horticulturist and been in the trade for many years. As well as doing all sorts of garden work i have a retail nursery. I do garden work mainly for friends and family, mainly because it is so hard making a living just out of doing garden work. It is mainly seasonal work. Weather dependent as cutting grass in the wet is a nightmare. I can get a job sitting and driving a dump truck all day for £15 an hour.with all my national insurance and tax paid state pension. no major overheads like insurance. waste carriers licence. Disposal of waste. What is so expensive. Wear and tear on vehicle and equipment and replacement, strimmer cable, 2-stroke oil, petrol for lawn mowers and strimmers, getting to job to job,this is time that is lost and don't get paid for. Hours for quotations and invoicing. Chasing up late payment. Spend hours laying turf tell the customer to make sure that it gets water daily in the summer, phone call a week later the turf had all shrunk and going Brown, guess what has not been watered.with also can you just it will only take 2 mins. I do enjoy my job just sitting on a dumper truck all day isn't for me. But wish sometimes customers had a little bit more understanding as it is all hard work with little return.

That's £25 each. I'd pay it, as I'm not tight.. & I bet they weren't just cutting grass. Quite a few people sound invested in finding cheapest possible tho. I suppose because manual work isn't particularly respected.

I couldn't look an adult in the face and hand him/her a tenner after he'd just done an hour's work for me.

This thread is from 2014, good folk of MN.

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I can't imagine how a gardening business can be profitable on £15 p/h after paying tax, travelling to jobs (time and vehicle and fuel), seasonal work issues, tool and equipment, advertising, accounting etc.

We pay a flat monthly fee of £100 for a spotless garden. They come when they think they need to which varies according to the season and do what they think they need to do. I'd guess we pay close to £20 per man/hour.