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?

I always think if a person over-quotes then they don’t want the job. I had a decorator quote £1,500 to paint my son’s bedroom recently!! The job was a bit of a faff because some sanding was involved and there’s a high ceiling. The chap who next quoted and got the job charged £450 and was brilliant.

I’m in West Yorkshire and it’s £25 an hour here too. As many others have said, weeding would probably be best suited to a student or handyman. A professional gardener will need higher pay for overheads and experience.

I'm In the South.
My DP is a gardener, his hourly rate is £20.
And what he heard from his client that its reasonable.

I have a small garden and pay £15 an hour for weeding and turning over the soil as I have a bad back, the rest I do myself

My parents who have a large but immaculate garden had a gardener employed full time and to be honest he mainly did weeding. Weeding is back breaking work - either buy perennials that suppress the weeds, learn to live with them, invest in a lot of toxic chemicals or pay over £20 an hour.

We pay £26 an hour for qualified gardener.Remember they need tools a van and insurance as well as unpaid travel time from one job to the next and when too snowy to work etc.

Would it just be weeding though? Or would you start expecting them to do things like hedges, mowing etc?

That rate seems about average, we pay £100 for 2 hours of mowing/weeding/trimming.

I pay £15 an hour in London to a very efficient female gardener for weeding and chopping things back.

The male gardener I used to use charges £30 each as there are two of them. I can't afford them just now but they are qualified.

If you ask a gardener to deweed they’ll often do it really well and in a way that stops the weed from returning immediately and without harming the rest of your plants. They’ll use specialist products too. They might even offer to dispose the weeds safely so they don’t grow back within days.

@chomalungma not comparable to baking a cake for £15 at all. It'd take a baker 4 or 5 hours to bake and decorate a reasonably simple cake so if we take my £15/hour for a skilled person which is between £60-75 plus ingredients and electricity at £15 so likely £75-90.

Don't talk shite. No one is being paid nmw. No one is being paid LESS than nmw.

I was offering between £1.22 and £6.22 OVER min wage for simple weeding which is a job I have done before for minimum wage.

To whoever said it was "peanuts" for a teenager to get £10/hour- nmw for them is £4.55!! I did part time jobs throughout my teens and early 20s all for NMW.

This thread is ridiculous but I'm glad most people in the poll agree with me.

GRRR...... Frontline careworker here, £9 per hour, 'Crap for the Carers'!

I really hope you don't insult your cleaner by asking them to weed your garden. Honestly don't do it.

I pay £15 an hour for two desirable areas in Yorkshire and he's a very experienced and reputable gardener.

However, we do also pay £25 for a large bag of the stuff that needs taking away if there isn't enough room in the brown bin.

I'm happy with that!

@Starrynight73 - surely the OP knows her own cleaner better than any of us ?
My cleaner wouldn't be 'insulted'. I've asked before "if she know anyone who might be interested in doing X or Y" and she's said "I'd happily do that" or "Can't think of anyone but I'll let you know if I do".

How is it insulting to ask if someone wants to earn some money doing weeding ?

@user1493494961

Perhaps they didn't really want the job.

Exactly my thoughts too

It's just weeding. We pay a lot more for hedgetrimming as it requires equipment and 2 people to do.

I stated in my post the person was based 5 mins away so I don't understand why people are adding 1 hour of 'travel time'.

Totally agree @LaBellySausage

You always get the same on babysitting threads too.

Some people live in a very different world from me.

Both from my world as someone who sometimes wants to employ people and also as a parent who has 3 young adults (and so recently 3 teens) all of whom would be delighted to pick up work for the generous amounts you are thinking of offering.

I think £26.50 PH is absolutely insane TBH! Surely most gardeners cant earn this much?

@chomalungma not comparable to baking a cake for £15 at all. It'd take a baker 4 or 5 hours to bake and decorate a reasonably simple cake so if we take my £15/hour for a skilled person which is between £60-75 plus ingredients and electricity at £15 so likely £75-90

I'm not comparing this to baking a cake.

I am saying is that there are people who run professional cake baking businesses who provide a quality product and take into account all the time, ingredients etc needed to make a cake. And charge appropriately.

Then there are people who say that they'll charge £20. And it turns out that if you add up ALL the time spent on the cake, the time spent in discussions, admin, getting the ingredients etc, they are earning £2 per hour.

And people complain that some people over charge for cakes because the ingredients didn't cost that much so how can they justify that price....without knowing how a business runs.

And there are people who are more than happy to charge £20 for a cake because they either don't know how to price it properly or they don't care.

I would be looking for an odd job guy as gardeners tend to want bigger jobs that make it worth while. I wouldn't want to pay any
more then £15 an hour for it either

I don't think its a question of reasonable or unreasonable, its a negotiation. You ask how much? they tell you, you say yes or no.

There's no problem with not wanting the job.

But it doesn't mean £26.50 is reasonable.

He's never met me I was just given his number by a neighbour as she used to live near to him and had heard he might do bits of garden work. I text saying:

'Hi X I got your number from Y- would you be able to help with 3 or 4 hours of weekly weeding at location Z?'
'Yes that's what I do- when are you free for me to come by?'
'Brilliant- can you let me know your hourly rate?'
"It's £26.50 per hour"

I haven't hounded him. I haven't asked him to do something he doesn't do. I just asked if he did weeding and he said yes. He gave me his rate, I thought it was too much, so I thanked him but said it was out of our budget.

All I asked on here was if others thought £26.50 per hour was reaonable. Most people have agreed it's too much for weeding. Not sure why I'm getting all this aggro in the comments section as if I'm taking advantage of someone.

I’m a tree surgeon, I get asked to cut hedges. I charge the same rate for what I need to cover my costs whether I’m chipping twigs, hedge cutting, felling a whole compartment of trees or rigging down a monster over 2 garages a green house, play area and brand new fence.

@chomalungma but I'm not offering £2/hour. I said for a skilled person I'd offer £15 hour. What has £2/hour got to do with anything?

It's quite simple. They either know they can get that amount an hour or they don't like weeding!

I do something completely different, but when I've been able to set my own rate, I've sometimes charged more for boring work and less for interesting.

No-one enjoys weeding. My Dad's gardener loves his power tools. Getting down on the ground. Not so much.