AIBU to charge £16ph...

[flowercover]

Hello everyone,

I am currently unemployed and to help myself out of this I've decided to try starting up my own gardening service in and around Norwich, and just wanted some feed back from both customers and other gardeners.

I have written a business plan and am trying to calculate what I need to charge in order to make a livable income. Would £16 p/h be too much? Would you rather employ somebody hourly or half day/full day? I can charge less for half/full as my costs would be reduced

Also, if you employ a gardener where did you find their services advertised, and what kind of service were you looking for? I am RHS trained with 5 years experience in a walked kitchen garden and a specialist nursery. Therefore I can offer from simple mowing/pruning/clearing to full garden redesign.

Anything that could help welcomed.

I'm female and 38.

Thanks so much!

We have regular gardeners they come for 5hours every 2 weeks and charge £30 per hour but that's for 2 men.
It's a very big garden (1.5acres) and we don't get them to mow the lawn but they do hedges, pruning, weeding, planting and various projects ( they have just laid a bark path and are currently putting up a fence and planting a hedge in front of it - it's taking a while as it's about 70m long)
They provide all tools & we burn or compost green waste onsite, we either provide materials or pay cost for them if needed.

They don't have formal qualifications but are fully insured, work extremely hard and are good at what they do.

We found them through a local google search but they also advertise on Facebook
They have expanded their business loads since we started using them and part of that is word of mouth. I have only been too happy to recommend them and so has everybody we have recommended them. They do a mix of projects (they quote a fixed price for these) & regular maintenance for clients (hourly rate)

Try to get friendly with local landscapers and builders. Quite often once the hard landscaping is done, the householders needs help with planting and maintenance. A good place to start is Marshall’s Catalogue. They have a list of approved landscapers for each area. I had a garden makeover last year, just over £ 16000 for a tiny garden. But the cost included a big list of tradespeople recommended by the Landscaper. I am sure that some Builders and landscapers, would see it as adding to their business if they could recommend someone to maintain their product.

restof if you are in a two up two down, you are being diddled!

That is far too cheap for one-off jobs. You need to factor in your time marketing, travelling, admin etc. Might be easier to do these by the job.

For regular work it still seems on the cheap side but I’d ask around to find out the going rate locally.

"I had a garden makeover last year, just over £ 16000 for a tiny garden."

I certainly hope you added at least one 0 by mistake there!

That’s about right StormTreader. £1600 probably wouldn’t buy you the hard landscaping materials even, even for a small garden.

I'd expect to pay at least what a new kitchen would cost to get a full garden makeover.

Even new plants are expensive!

No, I wouldn’t pay it. I would be heading towards someone with more landscaping and evidence of qualifications at that price.

I’m near Norwich and know many that charge less than that.