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.

Hardly telling me porkies as I watch him do it.! 🙄

He does it all within half hour - cuts the one large lawn with the mower - AND does the edging around it. Choose to believe it - or not! Still doesn't alter the fact that it's true. If you or your DP takes much longer, maybe you need more practice.

Yes. Ddelf-emplyed people have many hidden expenses.

It depends on the area. I pay £15ph.

I pay £25 but he's brilliant

Exactly this!!! And someone doing the simple task of mowing a lawn, and trimming the edges around it has got the audacity to charge £25 an hour !!! And some people are mug enough to pay it as well. LOL. These 'gardeners' must see them coming! 😆

Mowing a lawn is not a 'skilled job!' 😂 Anymore than ironing is!! Behave yourselves!

I think £50 is reasonably expensive for mowing. It’s unskilled labour, most people manage to do their own! I think £25 is more reasonable for the jobs that require knowledge and experience to do a good job. 2 hours seems like quite a long time to cut and edge a swimming pool sized area of grass. Was the garden landscaped professionally?

No, they're not. This was quoted and then retracted - the figure is more like £20 or £30. I agree doctors (and more, nurses and midwives) aren not paid enough. But it's simply not true to say doctors as a group are paid £14 per hour.

Ok, so he doesn't do the whole job in that time, does he? Someone who is self-employed to use tools to cut a lawn is charging you for everything needed. You say your husband takes half an hour to use a mower and do the edging. The OP says she's charged for the same - the mowing and the edging.

So, you need to work out now long it takes your DH to clean and maintain his tools, don't you? And how much did they cost? And how long would it take him to get to your house from his last job?

If you still feel all of that fits into half an hour, then perhaps you should start hiring your husband out as the magic gardener. Or, if you're now thinking 'oops ... wait a minute, it might take a while for him to do these things ...' then perhaps you see why it costs more to pay someone to cut a lawn, than it does for you/your DH to do it onsite!

We pay £18 in NW

Never run a business I take it.

My gardener takes 15 minutes and charges £23. There are two of them though doing it at once. It’s literally a rectangle of grass, no faffing needed. They do a few on the same street so earn quite a bit in the hour they are here.

My gardener charges £25 per visit to cut the grass irrespective of lawn sizes or time taken. Actually only takes him about quarter of an hour, but I'm no longer able to do it myself and I can't find anyone cheaper.

I can assure all those who think £25 per hour is ridiculous that a self employed gardener charging this is not becoming a rich person. There are so many expenses that have to come out of this. They are not being paid this amount solidly all day. They aren't being paid for the hours spent doing admin, or driving round quoting for jobs, or marketing.

I find it amazing that people feel they should be able to pay subsistence wages to have others provide what is essentially a luxury service for them. If you can afford to outsource these jobs to someone else, you shouldn't begrudge them a living wage.

I recently paid £50 for a hair cut which is the going rate in my area. Was in there much less than an hour. Fine, my hairdresser is not getting £50 an hour out of that and she is also not getting rich.

If other jobs pay peanuts, they shouldn't. Just because big business and our government are happy to have people working for nothing to service their lifestyles doesn't mean that is right and it doesn't mean the better off amongst us should follow that model.

In addition to all the money he has to fork out monthly to mainty his business. It has cost my husband thousands to set it up. His lawnmower, for example was not £50 from b&q. A professional.mower is £1000 upwards.

Wow, really typical? More than twice minimum wage? I'm shocked

I jolly hope everyone who can and does pay their gardener this much (great, good for you) supported all the recent strikes? Imo it's completely unreasonable for a teacher or nurse to earn less than a gardener.

I pay £30 a visit and it takes about an hour so sounds fine to me. Had a few guys over the years and it's always been about that amount.

FWIW, I commented on pricing because I work in a plant nursery; therefore I know the rates for jobs like this, because most of us freelance a bit and we work closely with freelancers.

A gardener getting £25 per hour is not getting more than a teacher or a nurse (and yes, I support the strikes; I've been on the picket line myself, when I was a teacher in HE, and both my sisters-in-law work in the NHS, so I know my stuff). A gardener getting £25 an hour is factoring in the cost of expensive equipment, time to get to and from the job, and all the other costs of freelancing.

No one needs a gardener. It's a bit of a luxury. People need nurses and teachers. It's not a race to the bottom; no one who is charging £25 per hour to cut lawns is stealing money from the teachers, so why put the two things in competition like this?

Those comparing salaries to self-employed have (presumably) never been self employed and never been involved in business finances.

If I pay someone £30 an hour as an employee, that represents a portion of what they are really getting for their labour:

• I am probably paying some pension conts
• I am def paying some NI
• I am probably paying annual leave days
• I am also probably paying some amount of sick leave
• And some maternity or parental leave
• Some training
• I am probably providing their equipment to work with (eg a PC)
• Insurance in case they are hurt at work
• Maybe the building they are working from
• They will often be getting £30 for every hour they work, without any unpiad hours during the day when moving from one job to another

If you budget for an FTE in business, you budget approx. twice their salary. So a job paying £30k a year costs the business about £60k in total. Some variations to that, depending on the industry and specific role but you get the idea.

If I am self employed and taking £30 a hour, I need to cover most of that BEFORE I take a wage. When I was self employed, I worked it out that to cover basic amounts of all this took about 50% of my hourly rate. So if I charged £30 an hour, I actually was paid around £15ph.

So, there are only 2 questions here

1. Is it worth it to the customer to pay £25 per hour to have their lawns cut? That's a personal decision.
2. Is is reasonable for a gardener to earn £15 per hour

I pay £40 to have my lawn cut, edges done and any other maintenance such as hedge trimming and collecting golf balls and throwing them back (garden is backing off to a golf course). He usually takes less than 2 hours and that includes a good bit of chat and a cup of tea but he is so lovely and happy to come at short notice that I pay it even though I think it's extortionate.

I am a teacher. My husband was a teacher. He left teaching to set up a gardening business. He charges for jobs usually, occasionally an hourly rate if it is a more open ended task. He would charge at least £25 an hour.

I can confirm he is taking home much less than he was as a teacher once everything is taken into account. And working longer hours, with less holiday, (none of which is paid), no sick pay and no pension.

One more time for those struggling with this - a gardener charging £25 per hour is not earning £25 an hour.

I'm in the SE UK, Gardeners here, charge around £60 to cut front and back lawns, for elderly folk. Some do have large end lawns, but not all. I thought that was a lot of money,my lawns are around 36 x100 feet, doesn't take that long with an electric mower. I cut twice a week, often will use the push mower. I don't do the edges every time. We used to have quarter of an acre,took me an hour to cut just one lawn with a petrol geared mount field. They asked me at work if I used nail scissors, not believing it took so long

Imo it's completely unreasonable for a teacher or nurse to earn less than a gardener

Why?

I know a number of SE painters & decorators, plumbers, taxi drivers etc who out earn many teachers and nurses, even after the costs of being SE.

What does being 'reasonable' have to do with it? Arguably, teachers should earn more than footballers but it's never going to happen is it?

Depends where you live I guess op.

My gardener was £12 an hour. Rural Perthshire. I just had him while my long Covid meant I couldn’t mow, prune and weed for myself. He was a hard worker, deep dug out a whole border of ground elder infestation, mowed the lawn, pruned all the trees and perennials and cleared loads of Ivy and brambles from the rhododendron bed. I do the garden myself now, but he was brilliant for the year I was really incapacitated.

Why on earth would one cut twice per week?

How awful for the environment.