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?

some people are super out of touch when it comes to the going rates of things.

That's very low pay for someone doing a hard, physical job.
After his expenses and travel, he will probably only just make minimum wage.
Would YOU go and clean someone's house or garden for minimum wage?
You are being ridiculous.

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

That is snobbery. £18ph is a good rate.

Get your own hands dirty, no one owes you slave labour.

I'm in Scotland and it's the same.

Apart from the fact YABU because it’s supply and demand, you are also BU because you are a raging snob. Does it also annoy you that your jr doc kid earns less than a train driver?

Your Jr doctor child by definition has no experience

They don’t have to buy their own tools and insurance

They are training for a high earning career, they just aren’t actually qualified yet

They won’t be forced to stop working early because they are doing a physically demanding job..

Would you do it for an hour for £18? You pay for the time you save, their costs and experience.

I agree that does sound cheap. Locally it's around 20 ph.

Midlands here at 20 ph

Wwll if someone paid you less to weed would you? I doubt it then why expect someone else to be paid so little.

Do it yourself otherwise.

We have skilled reliable gardeners £15 per hour use own tools and do a great job. We appreciate them a lot.

Not sure when 'gardening' became an 'unskilled' job/profession, I'm sure many RHS Graduates and descendants of Capability Brown could enlighten us further.

I'm reasonably certain your adult young doctor child is paid more than a basic hourly wage with no benefits; and as you've already inferred, you live in a low wage area, so £14ph + benefits is a grand wage, and one with potential to earn massively more as they progress.

Maybe you could move to place with no garden to tend or communal gardens as your current gardening ability is Nil and your only alternatives are left to grow brambles and bindweed (or rewilding) or pay a local Prole above NMW.

Or learn how to look after your garden.

We pay £20 an hour for 2 hours a fortnight and he has all his own tools. No grass so no grass cutting - it's tidying, cutting things back, weeding etc. - and he will do other stuff like leaf sweeping, drain clearing (water runoff not sewers) if there isn't much actual gardening to do. We had someone before who charged a lot more and wasn't very good, so we're definitely hanging onto this one!

You're deflecting. It's nothing to do with where Mumsnetters live. It's to do with you not having an appreciation of how much people earn.
I live up north and pay my cleaner £15 an hour. I wouldn't bat an eyelid at paying £18 an hour for a general gardener.

We now pay 40/hr. A deal in our opinion as our previous one wanted 65/hr. We have a small garden and they r barely here half an hr. We r in London and r too busy to do it ourselves so the work is outsourced to save our sanity.

So you inexperienced son who will
have everything at work provided for him should be paid more through payroll than someone who presumably knows and has experience of the stuff relevant to their job, has their own tools/materials etc and maintains their own business costs and is not simply paid through payroll?

I pay £30 an hour! And he's not very good.

You want people to say nice things to you yet you want to screw over this man. Hypocrite much.

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

Well it isn't unskilled, is it? Or you wouldn't be letting him in your garden at all. And he's not being paid more than a doctor. As PP have said, you cannot directly compare the hourly rates of employed and self employed people. He will have to include sick pay, holiday and travel time in his hourly rates. I drop my hourly rate if someone can give me 3 hours or more as a block booking, because it saves me travelling around.

Take out his overheads and travel time, factor in sick pay and annual leave, and he won't be doing all that well out of it. £10 per hour if he's lucky, probably.

Perhaps you might consider following your own advice @Spagnolia

Not sure what the relevance of what a junior doctor gets paid is but I'd expect to pay around £20 per hour for a gardener offering basic services. Would you do that sort of physical work for less?

Lolling at 'my junior doctor son', classic mumsnet stealth boast 👌
£18 ph sounds pretty standard for people offering a practical service, especially self employed.
A lot of gardeners have horticultural qualifications as well, I have had hell of a few years being ripped off by gardeners who cost way more

It’s you who don’t sound very nice or indeed bright OP. Presumably your kid has a pension, sick leave, holiday pay etc etc. Why shouldn’t a gardener be paid as much as a doctor anyway? Many of them are very skilled professionals.

I’m in the north, and you sound pretty snobbish and tight, tbh. I pay £45 a month for my gardeners (standard semi in the suburbs). In summer months they come every fortnight - sometimes for 15 minutes to mow the lawn, and sometimes for ages to do whatever they need to do. I trust them to the job, basically!

That isn't true( (since 2016).

Gardener here!

My rates for this year will be £20/hour (Midlands) and the other gardeners I know charge at least that.

As others have explained, it is not comparable to an annual wage - I'm affected by the weather, I don't get sick pay or holiday pay, and my tools/clothing/travel costs come out of that. To be honest I should probably charge more.

It is not 'just outdoor cleaning'. Knowing how to prune an apple tree to maintain its health and maximise productivity, or prune a climbing rose so it will be covered in flowers next summer, or recognise each plant and know how to care for it... Being able to suggest plants for a tricky spot, knowing which perennials can be divided and when... This is a skilled job and the gardeners I know have all done RHS qualifications and have years of experience, plus a love of plants.