To think £40 ph is alot for a gardener?

[allinadaystwerk]

Just that really. Had a quote to give garden a good tidy, clear leaves, neaten low hanging tree branches shape the edges of the lawn, weeding.. just getting it to look half decent after winter.
Quote is £240 for each day worked 10am till 3.30/4pm.
Grass area is app 6x6m and similar patio area so not a big garden.
Am I just deluded and need to pay the bloke or is he having a laugh...

My friend is a garden designer/landscaper. He's brilliant ,really creative and knowledgeable about plants and where best to plant them.

He gets people phoning him for garden maintenance which he just isn't interested in as it doesn't pay enough so he tells them his daily rate to put them off.

See, there's gardeners and there's gardeners.

There are people with no skills, no qualifications, setting up a mowing round and then offering to hack back everything else.

Then there are those with qualifications, skills, expensive and well maintained tools, insurance, membership to a professional accreditation body, with horticultural skills that won't just hack everything back, but respect the different plants and treat them accordingly. There are those that pay tax and vat and have pesticides training and the likes.

I know which one I'd pay £40 an hour to.

That’s average for where we live. For a good gardener with knowledge of what grows and bringing their own tools and such. If you just want someone to push a mower and rake leaves, obvs they’re cheaper.

I’m on the outskirts of London and was just quoted £280 per day for 2 people working 9-4 for garden clearance. Rubbish removal extra. That includes taking down a very old shed. They said likely 2 days work.

@cherry978

I've never had a gardener so i don't actually know the going rate but i am shocked at that price! If thats how much a gardener costs for that amount of time then maybe i should change my job!

People always say things like this but it's in no way comparable to actually getting £40 p/h for a full time week. As the gardener is self employed they won't have any paid annual leave, sick pay or pension contributions from anywhere. They'll need to pay for their own transport and if they take the cuttings etc away then pay to take that to the tip. Lots of time is spent on free quote visits that never lead to work, advertising, insurance, equipment and so on.

My friend is a gardener and garden designer and charges more because she wants to get the interesting jobs with people who are willing to pay for her experience and skill. You can of course find someone who'll do it at minimum wage but they won't know the difference between a weed and the interesting perennial plant you'd want to keep...

I pay £25 per hour, plus £10 per large bag of waste taken away. He is a proper college-trained plantsman.

I'm in London and good gardeners are hard to find - had to wait for weeks for him to fit me in.

For £40 an hour it sounds like you've found yourself a highly qualified horticulturalist proper gardener. He may be worth his weight in gold and worth the money. Or it may be a big firm that simply charges that amount.

However if all you want is a bit of lawn mowing and weeding in a small garden, you can advertise /look around for someone who does more generic gardening at £20-25/ hour which is more the going rate (South East). We have gardeners in our area (as lots of clients have gardeners) that tend to charge £30 a week and do about 90 mins per week to maintain front and back gardens. My 80 year old neighbour who has huge garden pays £80 per fortnight for 3-4 hours solid work (including bringing their tools) for a blipping huge park of a garden (mostly laid to lawn but plenty of borders and plants, his gardener even trims the trees).

i am a gardener, fully trained RHS, 20 years experience, charge £170-£200 a day- fuel, insurance, tip charges. It’s interesting that gardeners seem to be classed as unskilled and some people are so unhappy to pay what they would for other skilled professional.

That said that seems the high end of the prices you would expect to pay, but it maybe 2 people or else he may after seeing the job, not want it. and is hoping you may reject the price. With the price of fuel lots of gardeners I know will increase their prices, and accordingly may lose some work.

(Small trees, not whopping ones, that's a whole 'nother cost..!)

@allinadaystwerk

Just that really. Had a quote to give garden a good tidy, clear leaves, neaten low hanging tree branches shape the edges of the lawn, weeding.. just getting it to look half decent after winter. Quote is £240 for each day worked 10am till 3.30/4pm. Grass area is app 6x6m and similar patio area so not a big garden. Am I just deluded and need to pay the bloke or is he having a laugh...

It all depends on the Gardener and how good they actually are.

A friend {Teaches RHS Courses, massively knowledgeable} does gardens in West London and Country Houses and he charges this, BUT he is a very fast and competent worker.

He gets masses done, and yet he had a ''New'' person work alongside him for a day to show them what was what, and this person charges more, and is very, very, slow.

It absolutely depends on the individual.

It does sound a lot if the person is a slow worker.

Get other quotes in, and recommendations.

I do think there is a difference between a one off reshape and clear up garden to a maintenance gardening job. There's more skill and larger clearance work etc used in reshaping a garden that hasn't been maintained regularly. So £40 ph for regular work no, but if he has lots of qualifications and you plan to use him couple times a year then it may be the job you specified is worth that.

I have a couple friends who do gardening / garden design and offer regular garden maintenance. The highly qualified friend is amazingly talented and inventive in garden design and charges accordingly by the job. The hobby gardenner friend is also very good , charges less, works hard too but won't pretend to offer anywhere near same level of clever innovative planting design that first friend does.

DH recently got a quote for DFIL garden for similar - lawn, weeding, tidy edges, some moss treatment on the house and paths and pressure washing the paths - £260 for 10-3 and £70/month for maintenance. I was shocked (and I wouldn't have paid it in all honesty) but the results were excellent

@AtomicBlondeRose

Well, it’s whatever you’re prepared to pay tbh. My DP is a gardener - he currently charges £20ph but this will have to go up soon. Quite honestly I think he underpriced himself when he started out last year as he could work double the hours he currently does with zero marketing or advertising - I think he could charge more and people would pay it as there’s a huge shortage of gardeners! It’s all very well saying a teenager could do it. They could physically but you need the tools (not necessarily specialised but you do need some), you need transport and you need to be able to deal with all the leaves, branches and grass cuttings which is a huge part of the job. Plus cutting trees and hedges isn’t as easy as it looks. DP really needs someone to help him but finding someone reliable and who wants to do the physical work is really hard!

This, there’s a big shortage of gardeners and cleaners where I live, and some are charging whatever the market will bear. A friend charges £35 per hour but for this you’re getting someone properly qualified with 40 years experience and an RHS medal. It isn’t an unskilled job unless people want something very basic doing.

@Ikeptgoing

I do think there is a difference between a one off reshape and clear up garden to a maintenance gardening job. There's more skill and larger clearance work etc used in reshaping a garden that hasn't been maintained regularly. So £40 ph for regular work no, but if he has lots of qualifications and you plan to use him couple times a year then it may be the job you specified is worth that.

I have a couple friends who do gardening / garden design and offer regular garden maintenance. The highly qualified friend is amazingly talented and inventive in garden design and charges accordingly by the job. The hobby gardenner friend is also very good , charges less, works hard too but won't pretend to offer anywhere near same level of clever innovative planting design that first friend does.

Yes agree with this too. My friend who charged £35 per hour can plan a custom garden to your requirements, then make it all happen down to the last detail.

We pay £14ph and our gardener has been to horticultural college.

We pay £25 per hour, but that's for regular maintenance, which may be less onerous than the job you have described

I know a professional gardener. He charges £25/hour (just recently increased from £20) for regular work.

My gardener charges £16 ph plus £1 per mile travel. He is bloody excellent and takes great pride in getting all the weeds and roots out. He also knows the difference between weeds and plants.

I’ve had 3 gardeners before, who were nowhere near as good and charged roughly the same. One just took the tops off weeds, no digging over borders etc, another was racist and removed a load of bare roots as he thought they were weeds and another had no clue what he was doing.

Suffice to say, I would pay more for someone as excellent as my current gardener.

I’m your position, I would get another quote. Gardening isn’t the same as grass cutting.

@FleeceNavidadfromtheSheep

Is is just one person or are there a couple of them? I say this because our gardener charges £75ph but it's him and three lads.They're like a whirlwind, trimming, clearing etc and take all the waste away. Spent 2 hrs bringing our garden back to what it should be, ready for spring.

Same. I’ve paid a similar rate to the OP, but it covered 2 or 3 of them doing the work and removing the rubbish.

@purplepaintedpineapple

We pay £14ph and our gardener has been to horticultural college.

If he is self employed, pays insurance, has his own van /tools etc I am amazed he is making any money, or certainly not a decent wage. If you are travelling between jobs etc then you are not earning in that time. Some people do charge a lower salary if they are not running jobs through the tax system but that is not running a proper business

Mine is £20 an hour

Is he Alan Titchmarch? He’d be the only one I’d pay £40/hour for!

My gardener is £18ph but it's quite a competitive field around here with quite a few locals vieing for customers. I expect it could reasonably go as high as £30 in an area where demand outstrips supply of labour but £40ph means "I don't really want your custom, I don't need any new customers"

Probably the disposal of the garddn waste will be included. That's quite expensive these days.

Does seem steep, but may depend on where you are and whether he’s a ‘proper’ gardener.
I once asked a ‘gardener’ who does a bit for us now and then, whether he knew what a neighbour’s v nice shrub (visible over our fence) was.

‘A rhododendron?’ 😂, it was nothing like! I might as well have asked dh, who barely knows a daffodil from a dandelion.