To be surprised at £18 per hour for gardening?

[Spagnolia]

We are struggling to keep the weeds and brambles at bay and started to think we might get someone to help.

A guy was recommended by neighbour but I almost fell off my chair when I found out he charges £18 per hour for general weeding, grass cutting etc using our tools and equipment.

My junior doctor child gets £14 per hour!

We are far from the South East.

Do you have gardening help?
What is the going rate at the moment?

It depends what they are doing. We have a guy that’s pretty handy in all areas of the garden, he can put up a shed, lay a patio but he also clears the gutters, does general weeding, tidying and tree trimming. I normally have him in the spring and just before the winter. He generally does 4/6 hours and it costs around £40 an hour, he’s worth every penny as it allows me to keep the garden tidy when he has done all the hard graft. I think the days are long gone of people just looking for pocket money and charging a cheap rate.

A lot of them have neither though, only interested in pushing (our) lawn mower across and getting a cup of tea every hour. At least that's my experience. Of course I'd happily pay more for someone who actually knows a weed from a garden flower. Second the above suggestions of getting a student to help with the more straightforward jobs.

This can't be a serious post. YABU

Round my way it's £30ph so you're getting a deal

Apparently Kylian Mbappe (a footballer) gets £1,600,000 per week!!!

You wouldn't want him trimming your bush at those rates !

Or maybe you would...!

South here (but rural and in a fairly economically deprived area). It's £25.00 per hour here.

More than I get as a qualified solicitor. (The firm might charge me out at £250 per hour but I sure do not get that).

When i was a cleaner i chargeed £15 an hour, i could only fit in 3 clients a day 5 days a week for 2 hours each thats 15 cleans a week totalling 30 hours = £450 (23k a year) but the thing is, I didnt often have 30 hours a week. many would cancel, many only wanted fortnight cleans and i didnt get paid travel time or products.

I paid for my own tax, NI, pension and savings for sickness or holiday pay, fuel.

After all my costs i came out with £250 a week. Just my tax taken out brought me to like 18/19k a year. Often i would skip paying a pension or savings as just couldnt afford it because clients cancelled on me last minute. Would take me a month to find new clients if they quit etc

Ours is £30 an hour! The going rate round here, afaik.

But he isn't pocketing £18 ph. Because he doesn't get paid to travel between clients houses, or to do the admin of setting up new clients or agreeing to come at different times than usual - all those odds and ends of work that salaried people take for granted as paid. I bet he's clearing more like £12-13ph averaged out over the working week, taking into account travel between clients and email and invoicing etc.

YABU! £20 ph is the norm around here!

What do you think it should have been?

This is about right.

Yes it’s a lot of money compared to a doctor but they’re SE and will be working less hours overall so getting less money per month.

A doctors salary also increases whereas a gardeners wouldn’t as much.

If you have the tools then you can put an ad for someone to do it for X price as many teens will do it cheaper.

It’s to cover the fallow winter months.

And because it’s men’s work with big tools. It’s basically outdoor cleaning (and no, most of them aren’t horticulturalists), which goes for 12-15hr but is, admittedly, year round.

Your moral compass needs some looking at.

I agree that is expensive for the work you need doing. The problem is that there’s a lot of difference between employing someone with extensive knowledge and training in plants, landscaping etc versus someone to essentially do what is very basic work and requires little knowledge of experience. You might be better off searching for an “odd jobs” or “handyman” rather than “gardener”. Better still, find a local and eager 15yo who wants to earn a bit of cash and pay them £10 an hour to do the work. Lots of teens would bite your hand off for this as they don’t have to worry about tools/insurance/sick pay etc and it’s just extra pocket money.

Agree with this.

was surprised that an unqualified unskilled wage was higher than a junior doctor wage. Nothing to do with snobbery

It's not when you include all the extras doctors get compared with the self employed like holiday pay, sick pay, unsocial hours payments, overtime, pension, pay progression.

Plus if gardening was so easy, you could do it yourself. But as you've found, it's not.

You sound brilliant, where are you based?

Spagnolia, more like spagodia goading on a boring evening.

2.5 stars
Stop feeding it, people

Not RTFT sorry if I'm repeating but surely the problem is that a junior doctor is being grossly underpaid at £14 ph not that a gardener is being overpaid at £18?

Oh no, the help is being paid more than my oh so important son!

No gardener who comes recommended turns up with no tools.

0/10 for effort

I have someone who does the same type of garden maintenance and they charge £15ph. Money well spent as I can’t seem to keep on top of it and it soon goes to weed. I normally book two hours every few weeks.

Going rate was £12 per hour in London over 20 years ago so that sounds about right.

of all the comparative salaries you could bandy about, you had to choose your daughter, the junior doctor.
I bet everyone you have ever spoken to knows your daughter is a hard working junior doctor.

We employ our gardener- base salary is £120k- plus bonus if she manages not to kill all the primroses.

*I mentioned my DC as they did 5 years at medical school and currently does night shifts as the only doctor on duty covering several wards, so a lot of responsibility looking after someone’s child, partner, parent.

I was surprised that an unqualified unskilled wage was higher than a junior doctor wage. Nothing to do with snobbery.*

Your DC doesn’t get £14 an hour then if they work nights, the pay banding is an increase of 37% for nights. So that more like £20 an hour and again they are still only year 1.

If you don’t want to pay for the work then do it yourself but you don’t want to do that because it’s hard, laborious work out in the bad weather. There’s a reason the going rate isn’t pennies.