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?

I’m a doctor. I was quite senior before I started getting more an hour than my cleaner. It’s how markets work.

Mine charges £20 per hour. Brings own tools / lawnmower/ petrol for that. It's not consistent work, only for part of the year and gaps where they have to travel. It's also hard work. I don't think it's unreasonable to pay a fair hourly wage that people can actually live on.

Seeing as you struggle to read between the lines (and you clearly also have no morals) I was referring to the fact that they are paying the gardener what is less than the national minimum wage, which is a minimum wage for a reason and set so less than that is actually against the law. Regardless of whether they are employed or self employed, it's the absolute minimum amount that we should be paid in order to make a living. The scum bags (and those who see no issue with this) who pay any human being less than what our stingy government have decided is the absolute minimum you should work for should be ashamed of themselves.

I would never exploit an elderly person for cheap labour. It sickens me that you're appalling attitude seems to think otherwise.

Another delightful post from you I see! Have you EVER posted anything at all that isn't nasty? Are you ok?

I made no comment at all on the ethics of paying an amount, I merely pointed out it isn't illegal - as you stated. And for pointing out your error, I get 2 paragraphs of nastiness.

Never heard of you. No idea who you are. What a strange stalkery post.

I didn't make a mistake, I explained that above. However, there are hundreds and hundreds of comments on this post and mine was nestled somewhere in the middle of it among other very similar ones. If I'm so notoriously nasty, why would you deliberately pick out a comment I made days ago and be rude to me? Clearly you were looking for some kind of argument.

On WhatsApp I got told it was £580 for a well-reviewed gardener and his junior/assistant to do a day’s work in South East London.

I said erm maybe I could just hire your junior? It’s simple stuff, I’ve got £1200 to spend but was hoping for 4 days over the course of the year for that.

And he didn’t bother to reply!

Obviously he’s in demand and doesn’t need the work.

The main thing I need is someone to dig what’s left of the lawn back to soil and then reseed it. There are not any brambles or nettles, but it gets a lot of those weeds with blue flowers that have turnip-like roots. Probably I just need a labourer for the digging and then someone more skilled can come in after that.

It’s not often I advocate for chemicals. But if your whole lawn is filled with what I think sounds like Pentaglottis sempervirens. Then you really should just spray it.

It regenerates from root so digging it over can be a recipe for disaster if someone isn’t really careful and really skilled. That’s a lot more than 4 days work.

Thanks for the advice! It hasn’t fully taken over, whatever it is, but it does come back each year.

I’m wary of pesticides because of the animals that cross the lawn - a dog, at least one cat, and also foxes, squirrels, and frogs. So I think I will try doing the digging myself. I guess this would be a good time of year to do it, before the weeds have grown back but while the roots can still be found in the soil?

Anyway if I fail utterly, I’ll have time to save up and phone the expensive gardener next year :)

It is a concern yes, the chemicals are quite nasty really.

You can minimise risk by applying on a sunny day. Once it dries it is considered safe but I do wonder!

If you want to do it for good then you would need to spray multiple times over a number of weeks in summer. Then rip the lawn up. Spray preemergent weed killer which stops weeds germinating. And then relay turf. You could fence the area. 24 hrs exclusion zone is considered best practice.

If you just want to do control then digging might be an issue because you really are going to have to get every root piece out. It’s really a full excavation activity so will trash your lawn and once you expose the earth theres risk that the seed bank will have it in anyway. So you have seeds sprouting plus the inevitable bit of root you missed.

You could try to weaken the plants with a vigourous mowing regime. Really low setting. Just keep mowing and mowing and mowing. Every time you see green leaf get it gone. The lawn isn’t going to look pretty if you do that but it can be quite effective in the long run.

your jr Doc child is on the way to becoming very highly paid indeed.
£18 sounds reasonable for someone who needs to make a living. That's £37k a year - IF you can work full time hours in a physical job, then take away tax and NI, cost of tools, van, and unpaid holiday time

I am a semi retired gardener who only charges 12 per hour. I could charge much more and not struggle for work. Think about the price of a decent strimmer/hedge cutting combo tool....not much change from £1000.

Pentaglottis sempervirens is related to borage & comfrey, and is very good for pollinators. Maybe consider it a beneficial ground cover and just create some paths?

There's some in my lawn. There's also moss, dandelions, some little purple flowering plant I forget the name of and some marsh geranium. They seem to have reached a balance between them. Pollinators love the lawn and it's very green, and maybe 40 per cent actual grass. I'm not sure why we're obsessed with killing particular plants that are beneficial. I understand if non-natives take over to the detriment of native species, but not this obsession with tidiness and monoculture.

Junior doctor let's say 40 hours per week at £14 = salary of £29,120

Gardener £18 per hour, there's no way he is going to find back to back appointments filling an 8 hour day every day so this needs factoring in. Let's say he manages on average 5 hours work per day and then his travelling between jobs out of his own money. So 25 hours per week paid and then considering he isn't getting any holiday pay or the likes. So a salary of not much over £20k per year.

Not everything in this world is so black and white.

This is the stuff I’ve got. I think this year I will just try digging it out whenever I see it plus reseeding grass seed, and mowing frequently. Though (to try not to derail the thread totally), I’ll also look for £20-£25 self employed gardener (I’m in London) to help with the flowerbeds and pruning large shrubs etc!

Seems very cheap. Not sure of the relevance to your sons job or did you just want to get in that he’s training to be a doctor?

@WisherWood

Your lawn sounds lovely!

Totally agree and am doing the same. The bees desperately need the dandelions for early nectar.

Not sure how the worship of monoculture lawns came to be but in 2023 on a burning planet amid a massive insect die-off, we can't afford it.