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?

Think I’m in the wrong job or country. We got charged €800 to have our hedges cut one year. Two men, one day, tools, lorry and a trip to the tip.

The Gardeners Guild is a good point of reference: www.thegardenersguild.co.uk/how_much_should_you_expect_to_pay_a_gardener.html

@BackforGood apparently £10/hour for a teen is "peanuts", "nmw", "nothing".

Honestly I'd be so disappointed in my daughter if she thought she was above working a nmw job, or one that was double nmw as this one is.

I used to live close to a sheltered housing complex, i came home one day to a note through the door from an a Gentleman that lived in the complex saying that he had noticed over the months that i was very busy and could he possibly take over the care of my front garden as he missed his own garden so much. We came to an agreement ( he would not accept money) that he could do whatever he liked but i would pay for any plants or pots and provide a flask of tea, sandwiches and cake on the days he would visit and also a casserole to take home.

[quote LaBellySausage]@Junobug I view it in the same way as a cleaning job which people have to travel to. My cleaner charges £13/hour. The skill level is no different and the labour is of a similar intensity.[/quote]
I'm sorry you need to get over yourself @LaBellySausage. you pay your cleaner a very cheap rate. For a good cleaner to do a thorough job I would expect to pay £20 plus, and for a good gardener I would expect to pay the going rate which in your area is £18-27 per hour. Just because you don't see the value in it, others will which is whay they charge what they charge. I would guess you are in a salaried role and that is how you are working out the yearly salary. As a self employed person you need to include costs, travel, insurance, cancellations and unpaid holiday and sickness. At best this would be a £38,000 per year job, if the gardener worked all year round, which is unlikely.

[quote LaBellySausage]@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?[/quote]
That's not about you - that's a general comment about how some people 'run' businesses providing a service but don't realise the money they actually earn relative to the time it takes to run the business.

Hilarious that someone pays £27 for a domestic cleaner. I really hope you are being sarcastic.

What world do people live in? £27/hour for a cleaner?

I hope you are out there campaigning for FY1 doctors to get more than £11 an hour. Thank goodness it doesn't matter if you get a good doctor or not.

I pay 11 or 12 for garden and house jobs depending on if the guy takes the rubbish away.

All I asked on here was if others thought £26.50 per hour was reaonable.
You asked if it was "insanity" and "a crazy rate", and thought it was worth waxing indignant over on a general-interest forum, as opposed to just looking for someone cheaper. I don't know what you're really like, but your OP makes you sound like an elderly aristocrat who feels the labouring classes are getting above themselves.

@LaBellySausage

Hilarious that someone pays £27 for a domestic cleaner. I really hope you are being sarcastic.

What world do people live in? £27/hour for a cleaner?

I hope you are out there campaigning for FY1 doctors to get more than £11 an hour. Thank goodness it doesn't matter if you get a good doctor or not.

Don't you understand how a business works?

So there are 365 days in a year.
No weekend work - 104
No bank holiday work - 8
5 week holidays - 25
Sick days - let's say 5

So that leave us with 225 days of work.
Let's be generous and say that you do 5 hours a day of chargeable work. And 3 hrs a day of 'admin' around work

So that's 1125 hrs of charged work.

1125 * £27 = £30,375 of income.

Obviously that's gross income - no expenses taken out of that etc....

And there are more variables in that

I pay my gardener £15, she does weeding as well as pruning, planting etc.

She would never take a just-weeding job as it’s the other stuff she enjoys really

If you’d contact her for weeding, she’d up her price as really she would not want the job iyswim

Sure. An elderly aristocrat working as an FY1 doctor.

I vote labour or lib dem. I approve of unions. I approve of a decent living wage.

It's weeding. You're being unnecessarily nasty. I spend my days working for a very low wage in a job where I make decisions that affect whether somebody dies or not.

And I'm getting hounded for wanting to pay £10 for a teenager to weed, or £15 for someone who has done some gardening? When I myself earn about £11/hour, taking home about £9.50 per hour for working as a doctor?

The people saying they pay their cleaner £27 per hour sound much less in touch with the working classes than me. Like they have no concept of what money is worth. If you can get that for cleaning good on you, but someone paying less than £20/27 per hour for cleaning doesn't make them an 'unpleasant elderly aristocrat', it makes them normal. I pay my cleaner £13/hour. I am 30. I happen to have ended up in a house with a big garden by sheer chance.

Ah they have pushed you into defending yourself

Don’t engage with the silliness

Nobody I know pays their cleaners £27

But on MN just having a cleaner or gardener makes you a capitalist swine (or what was it? Elderly aristocracy?!) 😂😂🤣

Yes @LaBellySausage, you’ve told us you’re a F1 doctor enough times for even the most imbecilic of us to understand. You’re a trainee, trainees don’t get paid big salaries. You pay your dues and you’ll be on six figures when you’re a consultant or GP.

You need to understand that nobody wants to weed your four acre garden, that’s why they’re quoting rates you consider unreasonable. Because they just don’t want to do it. You have three choices - pay what’s asked, find someone who’s prepared to work for what you’re offering, or leave it undone.

Trying to persuade MN that you’re reasonable isn’t working and it certainly won’t get rid of the weeds.

@Mary54

Think I’m in the wrong job or country. We got charged €800 to have our hedges cut one year. Two men, one day, tools, lorry and a trip to the tip.

You certainly are. I get charged £80 to have my hedges round two sides of a 5 acre field cut and laid by an agricultural contractor. He does the whole area once a year. Massive tractor though. My own hedges around garden we cut ourselves with a petrol thingey tool. Burn the clippings. Its damned heavy but not especially difficult. I'm far too mean to pay £800 for that!

Our cleaner's rate is £11.50 ph. She set that not me! Why would I pay her more than the rate on her website?? Honestly, some posters have crazy ideas!
Yes OP it is a lot but as p p have said it's because nobody wants to it!!

@VinylDetective 65% of nearly 1000 people think I'm not unrèasonable. It's just a few recurring commenters who don't. Yourself included.

I'm out chaps. Thanks for the helpful comments.

Back to my manse and 4 acres to lord over the poor!

I challenge this post and statement? As my belief is that seedlings and emerging plants out of the winter hibernation can emulate weeds, it is very much a skilled and experienced gardener you need...! I had a gardening an florist business for 22 years and some comments I had from would be customers was shockingly arrogant! I would have rather stuck pins in my eyes than weeded some of their precious North London gardens!!

@VinylDetective

Yes *@LaBellySausage*, you’ve told us you’re a F1 doctor enough times for even the most imbecilic of us to understand. You’re a trainee, trainees don’t get paid big salaries. You pay your dues and you’ll be on six figures when you’re a consultant or GP.

You need to understand that nobody wants to weed your four acre garden, that’s why they’re quoting rates you consider unreasonable. Because they just don’t want to do it. You have three choices - pay what’s asked, find someone who’s prepared to work for what you’re offering, or leave it undone.

Trying to persuade MN that you’re reasonable isn’t working and it certainly won’t get rid of the weeds.

Actually, a lot of perfectly sensible posters have said they find the OP perfectly reasonable and pay their own gardeners around £10-£15 per hour. But I've noticed that some posters get very angsty around other women who have jobs and know what the value of skilled work is. And of course, you've committed the other unforgivable sin of admitting to owning land, which sends their little brains into a spin. They're not sure whether to pay homage to you because landowners are their heroes, to be jealous of you or to accuse you of lying. If you were a male poster saying the same, they'd be all over you.

I personally never give work to anyone who boasts continually about how good they are, how they deserve their excessive rate and who tries to make it sound more complicated than it is. Because they're usually full of shit, and their work ethic and standard of work is invariably shit too.

Oh you are a card @GreenlandTheMovie.

Can I just say as a Gardener that this thread is disappointing to say the least.

OP I get you are underpaid by the NHS. Firstly that is not a gardeners fault and secondly you are pretty much still in training. You are not yet experienced at the job or anywhere near what a doctor will finally earn. In years to come you could earn 100k+ a year as a doctor or consultant.

Who the beep are you to say that a skilled gardener shouldn't charge x amount and how dare they earn 50k+ a year (which they wouldn't on £26.50 but plenty do earn this as they charge much more).

Your outrage is quite frankly insulting.

This thread has been a poignant reminder why many good gardeners never advertise.

May the weeds continue to regrow bountifully in your garden.

£20 per hours in the south east. They also work through the winter as there is always work to be done as it is a large garden.

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

At three hours a week it’s more like £4000. If my maths is right. Which it probably isn’t. My point is you’re not paying them 55 grand a year as you’re only employing them 3 hours a week so..

@Racoonworld

I think you need to get a teenager or handyman type person rather than an experienced Gardner. It’s easy work that doesn’t really require experience. It would be like paying a hairdresser to just brush your hair.

This. You need a teenager who's working for pocket money. Do you have any neighbours or friends' kids who might be interested?

We pay out neighbours teens to water our vegetables when we're on holiday and they do very well out of it.

"No different to the skill level of a cleaner" - really?

I know I'm taking this to extremes but a skilled/trained gardener may have done 3+yrs in college and needs to know the difference between dandelions and orchids so that they don't pull up your prized blooms and will also know the correct way to treat each individual plant. A cleaner needs to be able to identify the vacuum and the toilet. Definitely a major difference in skill/training levels.