That £26.50/hour for weeding is insanity?

[LaBellySausage]

I'm looking for someone to come around for 3 hours/week to help with weeding the garden.

I was given a couple of names of local people who do gardening. I expected to pay somewhere between £10-12/hour, perhaps £15/hour if the person was an experienced gardener. I believe minimum wage is £8something but I don't think people can live on that.

The first person wouldn't give a quote til they came to view the garden and then was hesitant to give an hourly rate, preferring to give a rate for 'the job'. It's not a job that can be finished- it's like when I shave my legs the bastards on the other one have started growing back when I start the second. I just want a few weeds less per week. He eventually said £18/hour. I thanked him for his time but said it was a bit more than I had budgeted. The second guy said £26.50/hour!

This is simple weeding. Trowel and hoe provided. £26.50/hour is about £55,000 annually.

I worked jobs like this while in uni at minimum wage. For reference, we live in a very inexpensive part of the country- he would not be weeding Chelsea Flower Show. Both candidates were local so didn't have more than a 5/10 minute drive.

Am I being unreasonable, or is this a crazy rate?

This is a part of the country with a very low cost of living

So is mine, OP (East Midlands), and round here they charge £12 - £15ph

Good luck with the FB/Gumtree ads - you're doing the right thing

@chomalungma

I didnt say it was a professional job. I said it was something you could learn to do in one or two days. It was unskilled manual labour (not a trade). And no, I don't pay someone's travel to work costs when they live only 3 miles away. Thats just ludicrous! That actually made it £25.00 per hour! And that £5 was probably tax deductible for them too

So you wanted them to do 2 hours a day, 5 days a week..

What would they be doing for the rest of the week?

Why is that my problem? They have made the decision to work freelance!

But in answer to your question, do other jobs! If they're that good that they are worth that, then surely there will be other people queing up to employ them. Or they could go and get a regular job?

In reality ie in the real world, I found someone to do it for £14 an hour, they were better and didn't even need more than 2 hours training. They were super reliable and worked for me for 3 years! The more expensive two freelancers didn't even seem as if they would have been that reliable.

This is a part of the country with a very low cost of living

It’s a bit of a fallacy - food, petrol, electricity, the stuff we all have to pay for cost much the same everywhere.

I'm an RHS qualified, experienced gardener in a non-expensive part of the country. I know quite a few qualified gardeners. We all charge at least £15/hour for general garden maintenance, which your weeding would come under.

Anything less isn't worth it. We have to cover travel, insurance, tax, tools and equipment, admin time, clothing etc.

I think your quote was too high, and maybe you can find someone for closer to £15/hour. There are lots of gardeners round here who have all the power tools and a van and charge more - you need someone more like me who does border maintenance, proper pruning etc. and doesn't need to spend so much on tools.

Or if it's literally just weeding and you don't need them to have any plant knowledge, get a teenager to do it!

@Heavymetaldetector

My gardener husband doesn't sit on his arse for three months of the year. He isn't a gardener by choice per se, he had a huge break down and changed the way he worked and retrained. He started out at £15 an hour but with all the over heads as many pps have pointed out further up this thread it barely came to minimum wage. He now charges £20 ph flat rate for all jobs. He is extremely reliable and very hard working. He is also a cleaner part time for £10 but that is paye so no need to worry about pension etc for that one. But to say that people are self employed simply by choice or because they can afford not to work is simply not true. This thread has really highlighted to me why some of his clients are so entitled and rude to him and treat him like the hired help. He is not, he is a tradesman. I am also self employed as I am disabled and my work I can do from home and uses a skill I have - in a music teacher. I have a flat rate of £25 ph whether you are learning old macdonald or rachmanoniff. An hourly rate is there for a reason and is no one else's choice but the person setting it. I have two degrees by the way. You can't compare paye rates with how much you pay a tradesman because what you pay them IS NOT their take home pay.

Well, both of you sound like proper workers though. I really did not get the impression with the over-chargers that they were all that willing to work at all, unless they could get an unrealistically high hourly rate.

Being able to teach music is a real professional skill and being reliable is certainly worth paying for.

My DH is a gardener. He charges a minimum of £20 per hour depending on the job. He’s been doing it for 20+ years. You might think he’s expensive, but he’d do your weeding in less than half the time of the person you’d be paying £15, although he’d actually be most unlikely to do it because weeding doesn’t pay. He does weed for some of his customers, but only those whose large gardens he maintains on an ongoing basis. As well as general garden maintenance, he does landscaping all year round and hedge cutting in the winter months. He normally works at least six days a week. His overheads are high. He has all his own equipment the mowers cost thousands, the strimmers and hedge cutters cost well over £500 each and need replacing regularly. Also has insurance, waste carriers’s licence, etc. In the summer he needs to factor in the cost of going between jobs to cut grass - it’s not as simple as going to work in the morning and staying until it’s time to go home. I don’t think you can say he’s over charging, as he’s very much in demand and turns down work on a regular basis. Oh, and he knows all the local nurseries, tree surgeons, best places to get materials, local mole man, etc. He often saves his customers considerable amounts of money.

Why is that my problem? They have made the decision to work freelance

The point is - you wanted 2 hours per day for 5 days a week.
Which affects the rest of their day and working week - with getting other jobs.

So they won't be working for 35 hrs a week at that pay rate - which is how you got £55,000 a year.

Of course, it might suit someone who only wants a few hours work a week at set hours which works for them - so you got someone who charged less.

Oh yes, and we’re in a cheap part of the country too.

The way my back feels after weeding my garden, this afternoon, it's nowhere near enough.

It does make you appreciate people who work in NMW jobs or in shops, etc where they are not earning that much more and working part time and not getting their petrol paid either. Thank goodness for them, otherwise society would grind to a halt

They might not be getting their petrol paid, but they do get huge amounts of other employee benefits that the self-employed aren't entitled to.

Sick pay. Holiday pay. Compassionate leave. Pension contributions topped up by an employer. NI contributions and tax all paid and sorted for them. A contract if things go wrong. An HR department for back up and support. A regular pay check in their pocket every month.

Of course NMW isn't a fantastic salary but there's a lot to be said for the security that comes with being an employee. And I say that as someone who used to work for an employer on NMW and is now a self-employed business owner.

When it comes to money you can't compare the two. The self employed HAVE to charge more in order to meet their costs as they don't have an employer who does it for them.

@LaBellySausage

It's just for weeding because it's a large garden. I do the grass/edges/some weeding/pruning/planting/mulching etc. So it's just weeding I need help with.

There must be a horticultural college near you?

In reality ie in the real world, I found someone to do it for £14 an hour, they were better and didn't even need more than 2 hours training. They were super reliable and worked for me for 3 years! The more expensive two freelancers didn't even seem as if they would have been that reliable

How much money do you think they earned a year?

Anything around £20 an hour you’re doing well, up to £30 depending on experience.

We had a gardener for our last house. He worked around the village solidly from March til September (sun up til sun down, six or seven days a week), with some work in Feb and October depending on weather.

So he’s got travel time with tools between jobs to factor in (he walks between jobs with a wheelbarrow as it’s a small place so he keeps his coats down with no car). He’s also got four months a year he can’t do that type of work and another couple of months he can’t work as much due to weather. He makes up for a lot of that by working 12 hour days in summer. Then he’s also got cost of tools etc. Then out of his hourly rate he pays his own tax, NI, pension contributions, insurance etc.

I still think the only reason he managed to do it for £20 an hour and not closer to £30 is that he’s a bit older, single and lives in a house his mum left him. If he was younger with family and a mortgage or rent to pay, or did bigger jobs with more machinery it’d be a different story.

And this is in rural Scotland, it’d be more in a more expensive area/

Going rate in Norfolk is around £15 per hour for the type of gardener who does it as an extra on the side. Ring up a professional gardening firm / gardeners who have done training courses/qualifications and you're looking at £25 AND it has to be for a minimum number of hours at least two days a week on a weekly basis. I'm sure they make a garden look amazing, but we couldn't possibly afford or justify the cost when all we need is a tidy up.

I earn £10 an hr for caring for an insulin dependent young adult who is doubly incontinent, non verbal but a joy to call my job.
Just saying

Try putting your request on your local Nextdoor site or any local Whatsapp groups as there may be Uni students grateful for cash work but I don't think £15 is unreasonable for the inexperienced or maybe a retired person or £20ph for an experienced gardener. A gardening business will have tax/insurance costs to find, plus travelling, fuel for any mowers/machinery/cutters etc .
Also do check your insurance covers anyone working at your request on your property.
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@chomalungma

In reality ie in the real world, I found someone to do it for £14 an hour, they were better and didn't even need more than 2 hours training. They were super reliable and worked for me for 3 years! The more expensive two freelancers didn't even seem as if they would have been that reliable

How much money do you think they earned a year?

Again, what has that got to do with me? It was a person who wanted to work freelance, part time, who didn't suffer from poverty and who chose to live in a rural location because it suited her. So, no I wasn't employing someone under poor conditions or exploiting her poverty, if thats what your fanciful little imagination is hinting at.

So, no I wasn't employing someone under poor conditions or exploiting her poverty, if thats what your fanciful little imagination is hinting at

Well - you seemed to think that someone who wanted to charge £22.50 per hour was on £55,000 a year.

So I guess either you got that wrong or you can't work out what £14 an hour for 10 hours a week equates to for a yearly equivalent

Or maybe the person who quoted £22.50 had worked out that would give them the money they needed for the year and the person who quoted £14 an hour worked out that was the money they needed for the year.

Both had reasons for charging those amounts. Neither is at fault.

I think you get what you pay for. I lived in the NE and hired a Gardner to sort out my front garden as the nettles were invading all the nice bushes and flowers, he was only £15 an hour as was just starting out and destroyed all the lovely plants that cost a small fortune to replace

YABU gardening is seasonal. You don’t want a gardener, you want someone to pick up weeds/do a general tidy up.

@chomalungma

So, no I wasn't employing someone under poor conditions or exploiting her poverty, if thats what your fanciful little imagination is hinting at

Well - you seemed to think that someone who wanted to charge £22.50 per hour was on £55,000 a year.

So I guess either you got that wrong or you can't work out what £14 an hour for 10 hours a week equates to for a yearly equivalent

Thats right Chomalungma I'm clearly very stupid. But not so stupid as to get £14 per hour, which is what I paid someone else as opposed to the £22.50 per hour plus travel costs, *which is what I declined to pay".

I don't think either of those two freelancers actually get much work at those rates anyway, but one lives at home with her parents (in her thirties) and the other has a wealthy boyfriend and lives with him, so perhaps only needs occasional work. Its not do-able for most people to "work" that way or charge those rates. Most people don't have that luxury and need regular, paid employment.

Thats right Chomalungma I'm clearly very stupid. But not so stupid as to get £14 per hour, which is what I paid someone else as opposed to the £22.50 per hour plus travel costs, which is what I declined to pay*

It's perfectly fine to accept £14 for a job when someone else asks £22.50

But as you have said - there are reasons why people can charge different amounts for doing the same job.

You mentioned 'the real world'.

How do you price a job in the real world? How do you know what the going rate is?

If someone is charging £22.50 and is not getting enough work, then clearly they need to lower their expectations.

If there are lots of people who can charge lower rates for their work because their circumstances mean they don't need much money, then that's bad luck for people who can't lower their rates to those levels because they can't survive with such an income.

Chomalumga How do you price a job in the real world? How do you know what the going rate is?

Good question. I'm an expert in what the job was and was employed to do it at one time. I know what the going rate is and how difficult the job was.

If people can't survive on their freelance incomes, then it might be time for them to look for more regular employment. Obviously not everyone can find it at present! But yes, we live in a world where the reality is NMW or £10 an hour for carers, so asking £22.50 plus £5 travel for an unskilled job (not gardening) is chancing it.

I'm having a garden makeover done - so landscaping, without the design. The man doing it is an experienced brickie/flag layer. He has a labourer and an apprentice.

His rate is only £20 per hour and he is excellent. He charges his apprentice and labourer out at what they cost him. (£60 each for 7 hours). They would definitely be capable and willing to 'weed' for that. Most of their work is digging and soil shifting and they work pretty well none stop apart from a drink and a sandwich.

Once my garden is done I am offering some advice on increasing his charges as I am getting an absolute bargain.