To ask how much you pay your gardener?

[NewName73]

Apologies for this very first-world problem... but I would like to know the going rate per hour for a gardener, to do basic weeding, planting, pruning and general maintenance.

Country garden, not city.

Freelance rather than a company.

Thanks

This link might be helpful:
www.thegardenersguild.co.uk/how_much_should_you_expect_to_pay_a_gardener.html

Around here it’s between £15-£25 per hour.

Thanks - £25 an hour seems high, that's interesting though, and maybe I'm not so out of kilter as I thought.

I'm in the wrong job. How do you train to be a gardener?

We pay £15 per hour, but that's just basic trimming. Landscaping etc. is a lot more expensive, but hopefully that's only a one-off cost.

Yup, I am talking about basics. Weeding, pruning, cutting back, planting bulbs & annuals, etc. Not landscaping or tree surgery. Not even mowing or collecting leaves.

Do they have qualifications or more odd-jobbing?

I'm in the wrong job. How do you train to be a gardener?

The issue with this is that many people call themselves gardeners.
Do they have recognised qualifications? RHS? Kew? At what level? What is their expertise? What extra training do they have? Chainsaw? Propagation?

Are you hiring someone to cut your grass only?

An horticulturist would get a decent salary and so they should. £15-£25 depending on where in the country and not managing other staff sounds reasonable for a trained gardener

Oh and it is also extremely hard for the body so don’t wish so quickly

OP then why not contact a local horticultural school and perhaps some of the students would be up for it and discuss appropriate fees.

If they aren’t even collecting leaves or mowing the lawn (which I have never had a gardener NOT do) I would go for the low end of those estimates. To be honest that’s the minimum I’d expect a gardener to do...

We pay our two gardeners £15 per hour each for two hours every fortnight.

DH charges £22.50 ph. He does everything except weeding. People pay for his knowledge, skills and experience. He works for people who are very serious about their gardens. They are not run of the mill gardens though.

General garden maintenance, cutting grass, weeding, bit of pruning then £12-15 ph is more like it.

My parents gardener is £40 per week for 2 of them for 2 hours. Mum loves gardening, so the gardeners are there to do the crap jobs like shrub removal, ivy clearing, weeding, pond maintanence. They also build things like raised beds and clearing areas for mum to redesign.

Definitely worth it as mum gets to do the bits of gardening she actually enjoys.

We pay £30 an hour, in SE England.

I pay mine around £27/hour for 3 hours every two weeks, we’re in the South East and it is a large mature garden (which I hate).

£40 an hour for a team of 2/3 to come in and blitz everything. Reasonably big garden, lots of leaf litter, big lawn to mow, hedges to keep trimmed, also shrubs in driveway. They usually fill 1.5 green bins a week.

I like this approach as it's all over and done with in an hour. Feels a fair amount to pay given the work they get done, they work so hard. They haven't been since Christmas as nothing is growing really and all the leaves have dropped.

£10 per hour just very basic garden maintenance. Weeding, pruning, mowing. Previous gardener asked to be paid in beer

^ that is South East and they only take one hour to do it.

I have friends who garden, generally for maintenance they charge approx 15 per hour.

We have a large garden but manage it ourselves. We bring the gardeners in when we have big jobs to be done a couple of times a year. For two of them for a day they currently charge 300. So in the region of 20 quid an hour.

The reason we don't use our friends, is one the awkwardness of employing friends, but two, the jobs are big ones that require equipment, and one is a tiny female, and the other a retired man who does it because he loves it. Neither would be physically capable of spending 7 hours doing the heavy work the two big guys in their late twenties do.

£20 per hour, SE London. He's thorough and efficient, and if he finishes what needs to be done in less time, he will charge less accordingly. Like LoopyLu's DM, I call him in to do the less fun bits, and anything straining my dodgy knees. One plus for me is that, if clearance generates huge amounts of crap, he will take it away as part of the job; he has the relevant licence for waste disposal, and the capacious van needed for the job.

£12 per hour to cut grass, cut back bush, weed etc

£15 an hour

Ours doesnt charge by the hour, it is £20 to cut the lawn, do the weeding. Every few months, it is £60 as he trims all the privets and bushes down, we have front and back gardens. gardener only comes April-October. Nothing grows over the winter.

My gardener charges £10 an hour and has done for the past 5 years! He does everything including weeding, sweeping leaves, pruning etc. Very knowledgable. He is largely retired and does it to keep fit! I live in SE not that far from London.

But I know this is amazingly cheap and most others round here charge between £15-£20 an hour. £25 seems wildly excessive!

Pay £50 per visit - 2/3 people come and do what needs doing - they do all the garden maintenance - sometimes it is only 45 mins but sometimes they stay for a couple of hours - it evens up over the visits I am sure - they don't come if nothing is growing, no leaves falling etc so came for the first time this year on Tuesday.