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?

LaBellySausage

@Retrogal I don't need any of those services. I only need weeding so just a trowel/hoe

This says a LOT about your attitude. That’s almost the equivalent of saying you need a skilled cleaner just to clean your toilet- you will provide the cleaning stuff. But you only want to pay the time it takes to do the small and annoying job you don’t want to do. Despite the cleaner being professional and running a business, capable and ready to do much more than just toilets, thus wanting the necessary compensation in return for their work. But you only want the toilet doing. Takes 15 minutes. Don’t need a good and professional cleaner. As such only want to pay for 15 minutes work. Never mind that someone needs to have them do the other bigger jobs therefore the person you are employing will need a sufficient hourly rates to cover the costs of these and other business costs- whether you use those services or not. You sound the sort who would do this.. They are qualified gardeners. You sound incredibly dismissive of this fact. They have certain rates to reflect many things- all of which have been already quoted here on this thread. You are not special- you are actually quite derisive sounding when it comes to labourers. Be that cleaner or gardener. Why should a skilled and professional gardener break their own business methods and lower their rates just for you? Especially since you only want the worst part of the job for a very small amount of time?

Why is it that people who have money are so reluctant to pay others a fair amount for their labour?

If you go on the Nextdoor Neighbour site there are often recently retired people offering to do this type of work for a reasonable price , just to stay active .

Yikes some awful individuals on here. I don’t think weeding is a low skill job, you have to know what is a plant and what is a weed. Calling cleaners low skilled implies you could do your own cleaning too, I mean it’s such a low skill thing to do right.

[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 disagree, gardening is much harder than cleaning! I have been a cleaner but wouldn’t dream of being a gardener. Also a little skill is involved, knowing what are weeds and what aren’t for example. Also you can clean all year round. My gardener used to charge £15 an hour before he retired. He warned me I wouldn’t get anyone as cheap as him and he was right but I don’t begrudge it because I know they really earn their money.

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

I don't think you know the value of skilled work.

Your comment about £25 per hour being equivalent to £55,000 shows how little you understand about self employment.

I take it you saw the calculation about hours per year actually worked.

So say you take into account weekends, bank holidays, annual leave and sick days, you probably have 225 days available to actually work and earn money.

Say you do 5 hours a day that can be directly charged to a client.

That's 1125 hours of chargeable time.

£25 per hour would give you a turnover of £28,125

And that's BEFORE you deduct any business costs from that.

Yet you somehow came up with £55,000

OP , nasty posters aside - I think the main issue is that you don't need a 'skilled gardener'. Just as someone mentioned you cannot hire a 'professional cleaner' to only wash the toilets, you will have to pay a minimum hourly rate regardless of what you need done.
Traditional routes will not work here. Your best bet is to go on a site like Bark, or post on FB groups for neighbours/teenagers/anyone who wants a bit of spare casah.

Ask your cleaner if she needs extra hours and fancy a bit of outdoor work

Have less kids so you can afford to pay your help

If people fancy a play round with figures, here's a calculator for daily rates...which you can adjust for with percentage time spent 'not charging' because you are doing other business stuff, your holidays, assumed sick days, business expenses.

Basically, if you aren't doing anything chargeable, you aren't earning money. It's chargeable time that counts.

www.freelancesolutions.co.uk/day-rate-calculator/

We pay £15 per hour (we live in a reasonably expensive part of the country but not London or Home Counties prices) but that’s for full gardening where the guy bring/supplies all equipment. Just for weeding I wouldn’t pay more than £12.

Haven’t voted because I don’t know where you live.
Where we are now, NW,that person would be unemployed.
In our home town in Cornwall (second home heavy) and where we lived during our early careers in central London, they’d be fully booked with a waiting list.

No one needs a gardener for 3 hours a week. Do you live on a national trust park?

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?

Except you earn that for a full week, guaranteed. Anyone who works for themselves doesn’t get guaranteed hours. Apples and pears. FWIW Doctors are massively underpaid.

Just for weeding I wouldn’t pay more than £12.
To be fair OP has 4 acres (60 tennis courts) of garden filled with beds she made herself (so a freshly exposed seed bank) filled with cuttings.

a) this is unlikely to be mulched because if shes quipping about £25 for an experienced gardener she definitely isn't spending the 10s of thousands of £ it would take to sufficiently mulch such a garden with sterile material.

b) she talks of stinging nettles so has very fertile soil and likely a whole plethora of nasty perennial weeds which are actually made worse by handfork or hoe.

c) she talks of nettles - these are painful to remove and will go straight through gloves which are thin enough to enable quick weeding, are not hand pullable or quick to remove if you want to get rid of them for good.

d) the garden is 4 acres so think of the back and forth here. Standing up and down tens of times a minute, doing yoga in a bed of cuttings and running up and down 4 acres with a wheelbarrow - Its not a job thats going to get done quickly, correctly or reliably by a with a hand fork, hoe wearing regatta walking boots and a pac a mac.

The idea of the whole thing is so comical I dont even think this thread is real.

Today 20:33 RileyG73

No one needs a gardener for 3 hours a week. Do you live on a national trust park?“

Ours take at least a full day of my time each week in growing seasons and I’m pretty efficient. Certainly don’t live in a national trust park 😂

by a teen with a hand fork/ hoe wearing regatta walking boots and a pac a mac.

Honestly have gone from anger at this thread to hysterics haha

£30 an hour minimum for a qualified, insured gardener in London. I would worry about getting a cheaper, casual gardener who doesn’t know a dandelion from a dahlia!

FWIW Doctors are massively underpaid

Not post qualification, they’re not. OP is a first year junior.

Gardening is one of those jobs where the hourly rate doesn't reflect how much the worker earns per hour. They travel to and from jobs more than once a day if doing 2-3hrs in each place - so it's not a single commute. They aren't paid for the hours of admin answering enquiries, costing jobs, going out to recce jobs etc. And there's no holiday pay, sick pay, pension scheme etc included. The hourly rate in real terms is roughly half of what they charge.

Not post qualification, they’re not. OP is a first year junior

I disagree. My friend is a consultant neurologist, earns about 92k a year. She works like a fucking dog and is super super bright. If you compare her skills to many in industry she’s underpaid.

@chomalungma

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

I don't think you know the value of skilled work.

Your comment about £25 per hour being equivalent to £55,000 shows how little you understand about self employment.

I take it you saw the calculation about hours per year actually worked.

So say you take into account weekends, bank holidays, annual leave and sick days, you probably have 225 days available to actually work and earn money.

Say you do 5 hours a day that can be directly charged to a client.

That's 1125 hours of chargeable time.

£25 per hour would give you a turnover of £28,125

And that's BEFORE you deduct any business costs from that.

Yet you somehow came up with £55,000

So you keep saying. You've been saying it all day, continuously. I get the impression that it is you who doesn't have a clue what work involves for many people. But 'tis the internet, go as you please.

So you keep saying. You've been saying it all day, continuously. I get the impression that it is you who doesn't have a clue what work involves for many people. But 'tis the internet, go as you please

You do understand that calculation, don't you?

You understand what chargeable hours are -and that you need to think about how many chargeable hours you can do in a year to earn a decent salary.

I don't think you understand that a chargeable rate of £26 per hour does not mean that you get a salary equivalent to £55,000 per year.

Unless you work many chargeable hours per week, don't take a holiday, work weekends and don't take time off sick.

So you keep saying. You've been saying it all day, continuously. I get the impression that it is you who doesn't have a clue what work involves for many people. But 'tis the internet, go as you please

So go on then....can you explain how you think someone who runs their own business and charges a client £26 per hour ends up with an annual salary of £55,000

Waits...........

chomalungma Waits...........

Does sound like you have a lot of time on your hands