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?

[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]
A cleaner doesn't need to know the difference between 10,000 plants and weeds and isn't particularly at risk of injury or serious infection or of getting rained on when vacuuming the living room rug.

I could work as a cleaner, no problem. I don't have the physical ability or knowledge base to work as a gardener.

@UnshakenNeedsStirring I'd expect a higher rate in London but this is a part of the country with a very low cost of living

I see this kind of thing advertised on our local Facebook group and there’s always people clambering to do it for an awful lot less than you’ve been quoted. So I’d advise you place a similar advert.

I pay £30 for my gardener. They visit once a month, mow the lawns, trim all the bushes, weed etc money well bloody spent as I hate gardening. My garden looks brilliant now 🥳

Re the comparison with cleaning, I don't understand why being outside incurs a higher fee? It can't be about unpleasantness. For example I would rather weed in the rain or wind with some waterproofs on than clean someone's toilet indoors.

Btw mumsnet is a very middle class site with lots of high earners who pay their babysitters the kind of money you’ve been quoted. So take s lot of these replies with a pinch of salt.

[quote LaBellySausage]@Retrogal I don't need any of those services. I only need weeding so just a trowel/hoe[/quote]
If they have the skills/experience to do everything they aren’t going to lower their hourly rate just because you don’t want them to use the skills they have because what’s to stop you then saying ‘actually I want you to do XYZ this week’?
I’ve also seen photos on here from people who have paid someone to do a few jobs in their garden and had their shrubs/trees mutilated, that they just wanted tidying up, or had all their expensive plants dug up because the person they hired couldn’t tell they weren’t weeds.

@Flibbitygibbit £30/hour for how many hours?

It is a skilled job. A good gardener with good plant knowledge and years of experience is worth their weight in gold.

This would be a fair price for someone who has RHS level 3 qualifications (if they do).

South East dweller here and had a guy come and quote us last week £15 per hour for weeding, pruning and general maintenance - he is just starting up.

Oh and we're also in the North of England, not a high cost of living here either.

I'd advertise on Facebook for someone to help in the garden. A teenage student or a parent with school age children (when they go back to school) might well be interested in a little bit of extra cash without a big time commitment.

You won't necessarily get someone with gardening knowledge but if you give very clear instructions or even supervise them to help them identify weeds and plants, then you should be ok.

I have a gardener go every few weeks to the small garden of a flat I let out. I pay £40 for 2 hours and he weeds, prunes, cuts the grass and basically does whatever is needed in that time.

They can charge what they consider to be the right rate and you can take it or leave it.

I think £13 is very low for a gardener and I am not in London.

I'd expect around £20 per hour tbh, especially if you expect them to have the right tools, clear up and take away the weeds.

[quote LaBellySausage]@Retrogal I don't need any of those services. I only need weeding so just a trowel/hoe[/quote]
A gardener will have all that equipment whether they use it in your garden or not. The cost of the tools will be amortised over all jobs they do, not just the ones they use them on.

I'm in the London suburbs and I pay £15ph for our gardener.

He's coming in every fortnight for a couple of hours to have a proper clear out of our garden and worth every penny as he's cleared more in a few hours than I managed last year!

I'd say £15 an hour was very cheap for gardening. At around 20 is about the price most folk would expect to pay. It's quite hard physical work.

@Distressingtimes yes I understand that but I asked if they did weeding. They said yes.

If a neurosurgeon advertised as also doing some cleaning work, I wouldn't expect them to be charging the same rate for their cleaning as their surgery.

They could just have said 'sorry I don't do weeding, I only do topiary copies of the Hagia Sofia'

That’s truly bonkers.

Get a student or teenager- advertise on something like gumtree. Pay minimum wage (it’s weeding!!)

That sounds high to me. My neighbour does gardening for £12.50/hr (London commuter area). She’s not highly skilled, but mows lawns, cuts hedges, prunes various things & weeds. She knows her stuff.

My mum live more rurally in The SE and moans about paying £12/hr for someone similar.

@LaBellySausage

Re the comparison with cleaning, I don't understand why being outside incurs a higher fee? It can't be about unpleasantness. For example I would rather weed in the rain or wind with some waterproofs on than clean someone's toilet indoors.

Because being outside limits when you can work, very few people want to work in the rain. I’d rather clean a dozen loos than weed in the rain.

Gardening, as pp have pointed out, is seasonal. Gardeners can only work for eight months of the year.

I pay a neighbours teen £10 an hour to tidy the garden.
Fwiw I use Poundland metal wallpaper scrapers to do my weeding. Good for scraping them out of patio slabs.

Find a teenager to do it!

Round here the going rate for a decent gardener is £20. This is up north. When you consider that fact that he can't work year round ,has various tools and a van to service and it's labour intensive work, I don't think it's that bad at all.

@LaBellySausage

Re the comparison with cleaning, I don't understand why being outside incurs a higher fee? It can't be about unpleasantness. For example I would rather weed in the rain or wind with some waterproofs on than clean someone's toilet indoors.

It is different. Very different. It’s back breaking work for a start. You would get filthy, wet, freezing from the wind. You need to pay for a van, diesel, tools (professional mowers are (£1000), strimmers, hedge trimmers, all manner of little tools, pay tax & NI, pension contributions, general up keep of van and repairs, weed sprayers, licences from council. No sick pay or paid annual leave. Annoys me to fuck that people think it should cost £10ph.