Is £25 an hour reasonable for grass cutting rates

[Marika1994]

So I have a large lawn, takes my gardener 2 hours to cut an edge. Edging the lawns are a big chunk of the time. Is £25 an hour an OK price for grass cutting? He says he charges £20 an hour for basic maintenance and that the extra £5 an hour is to help towards cost of expensive machines.

Yes it's reasonable

Yes

Yes.

I pay my Gardener £25 no matter how long he takes ( usually an hour and half) two large lawns and a couple of large bushes.
He does all edges etc and puts it all in gardening bin.

Yes, typical.

My current and previous two gardeners charged £15 per hour

That would be expensive round here

£18 an hour is around average near me, so I think £25 is on the expensive side.

People saying it's reasonable - why is £20 per hour (the charge for the actual work bit) for unskilled manual work fine, when the standard unskilled shop/admin/carer/reception role is £10 per hour? Shouldn't they both be about the same?

If you take off travel time and costs, machines and insurance, it's probably a long way from £25 an hour they are earning.

Because they're most likely freelance self employed workers who have no sick pay/ pension benefits and have to factor this into their hourly wage. Also travel, equipment and any insurance costs.

I do think all the other jobs should be paid more than 10/ hour as well though.

I pay £25 and my gardener is here for around 30 mins!

I think the implication in the op from the gardener is that the 25% extra per hour (£5) covers those bits, with £20 being the actual hourly work rate.

The guy who's just finished doing mine was £25 an hour. He had some horticultural qualifications and knew what he was doing with the other plant maintenance stuff, pruning, planting etc.
The guy who's taken over is less qualified and more garden maintenance than gardener. He's £17 an hour.

He said that covers equipment and to be honest it sounds like a standard response to "why do you charge so much" when being questioned by someone who has never run a business. If he's got another 30 mins travel time on top of the work plus fuel and the vehicle itself, then equipment, time for advertising and dealing with queries, accounting, insurance etc, £5 doesn't even scratch the surface.

Excellent gardener is £17 in the SE. £25 an hour - I would do it myself!

1. Cutting and edging a lawn isn't unskilled manual work.

2. I don't think the examples you cite are unskilled either, but generally, if you work in a shop, as a carer or on reception, you don't pay for the equipment you use. If you cut people's lawns, you will have bought the lawnmower and the edging tools, and you must maintain them. Obviously, you need to recoup those costs.

It sounds perfectly reasonable. My husband is a gardener. You have to remember he won't be working solidly all day as will be travelling between jobs. He has to pay insurance, marketing costs, fuel, vehicle costs and tool maintenance and replacements. Can't work when weather is bad, much less work though the winter, no sick pay, no holiday pay, no pension contributions.

I also think people forget that having a gardener is a luxury, not a necessity. My husband turns over £4000-£5000 per month. After all the above are deducted (in his case he also pays franchise fees of around £700) his take home is around £1500. You aren't being ripped off.

@Marika1994

So you're paying £50 to have a large lawn cut? How large is this lawn? Is it a bowling green?! We've got a fairly large front lawn 60 ft X 45 ft I would say, (and two smaller lawns - side and back... I would not pay £50 to have the one lawn cut... It's like a 15 minute job... and 15 minutes for edging. DH does it in that time anyway!

He strims, blows and then cuts the grass and then the edging. All in all in about 250 sqm of grass but 5 different lawns of awkward shapes and a few square beds cut into a couple of the lawns. The edging takes just as long as the mowing does really. Also grows really long so even though he gets to use about a third of my bin, he still takes near enough a full big bag of grass away.

Seems most would agree £25 an hour is an ok price.

Thats expensive.

This is a miraculous fantasy lawn, I think! Or perhaps your DH is telling you porkies.

Yes! Out of that £25 he has to pay tax, wear and tear on equipment, travel time and fuel so he'll be lucky to actually get £12-£13

doctors are paid £14/hr

It is only expensive if you would rather do it yourself and save the money.

I wouldn't drive somewhere, get all the equipment out, edge a complicated lawn, mow a lawn and then get all the equipment back in, drive home, do the paperwork, invoice, pay the insurances, do the equipment and vehicle maintenance etc for less than £25 per hour personally.