Kitchen Garden Forum

I hope someone can help me with this.
A friend of ours who is recently widowed has taken on a local gardener to help her with cutting lawns and hedges etc. I was shocked when she told us last night that she was paying £13 an hour. The same man works for her next-door neighbour whom he charges £12 an hour.
Am I right to be shocked, or am I just behind the times?
Bear in mind that we live in a low wage area where the vast majority of full-time unskilled/semi-skilled/craftsmen/women jobs pay minimum wage or a little above.
I would be grateful for your opinions, or any current figures based on your experience.

Alan

No experience (wouldn't let anyone else near my garden!) but it seems pricey to me. Does he charge a pound an hour more as he moves up the street.
Considering a cleaner is about £8/10 an hour around here I wouldn't expect to pay anyone more than that just for weeding, lawn mowing, hedge trimming etc. Paying a certified gardener who would also develop the garden would be a lot more obviously.

Hi Alan

You may be behind the times

We live in a low wage area compared to the cost of living and housing market.

It depends on what a gardener can do - how knowledgeable is he/she, does he supply own tools -especially powered tools/fuel. They should have public liability insurance, and also employers liability if they have any helpers (even if casual or sellf-employed). If your friends gardener is satisfactory, then that is a fair payment.

Around here, jobbing gardeners charge between £8/h and £15/h, with some of the ride-on mower brigade charging up to £25/h. The £8/h lot usually tend to be part-time people who don't have a mortgage or young children (eg retirees or young people) or have a salaried partner (eg mums) .

Personally I charge £15-20/h for me, and £10 to £12/h for any skilled self-employed helpers (I pay them £8-11/h). I have a pool of about 4 helpers, who are all s/employed and use some of their own tools. I have the required insurance. Many don't...

The gardening business is unregulated, which has it's pros and cons. Good gardeners are often underated by customers, and bad gardeners (but hard workers) overated in their horticultural abilities.

Most self-employed builders seem to get between £15 and £30/h. Often they specialise in what to me, seem one dimensional skills - eg tiling or plastering, and still get twice the money a good gardener can get - it makes no sense to me. My customers seem to expect me to have the skills of a GP (of the plant world!) and a farm labourer as well as being 'just a gardener'!

Anyhow, rant over!

Hope this is useful to you

Cheers

Mole

Another thought...

£13/h 8hours paid work a day, 5 days a week, allowing total of 45 weeks a year owing to bad weather/21 days holidays = £23400 pa before tax. Isn't that about the average national wage?

I don't earn that btw, as I grow veg (v. low profit!) and share childcare with my partner

Mole

Mole is absolutely correct..
In my area the average charges for gardening fluctuate between £10 - £15 per hour

I have my own non-gardening related business where the hourly 'working rate' is much higher but when all my expenses are taken into consideration I have often thought I would be better off employed.

In our village people pay between £10 and £15 according to what they want doing. One small company charges £15 an hour but they'll recommend plants, buy them and plant them - so a bit like landscape gardening on a small scale.
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Granny

Alan, the point about price differences between customers can be simply explianed, its sometimes difficult to increase rates for an established customer so new contracts tend to start at higher rates than old ones are on , also sometimes you get the perceived ability to pay aswell, the yuppy whose too busy down the pub to mow his own lawn gets charged more than the little old lady who just cant manage it all anymore. In some cases personalities come in aswell, pleasant people tend to get better deals than difficult people do. did i say it was simple????

I thought for a minute it was one of those. What's a Greek urn?...about two bob an hour.(circa 1962 or maybe earlier)
Several years ago I gave up the day job and have been doing local work, all gardening related but every now and again I scan the sits vac. Last week, Maintenance person req.(local rest home) I gave them a ring.Can you do joinery, plumbing and small electrical jobs? said the woman. Decorating and gardening work? Do you have a P.A.T. certificate? (portable apliance test certificate.) Do you have a good Knowledge of health and safety regulations? Do you have a full clean driving licence? Can you work some weekends if needed? Finally how much are you expecting to earn? to which my reply was how much are you offering? Well thats the thing said the woman I dont want to waste everyones time but we normally pay £6 an hour!
So glad I'm grossly over qualified for the position. Strawberry Tart.

if you pay peanuts you get monkeys

Richard -you are absolutely right about variable rates. And the monkeys...

I do charge £10/h or less to a couple of old family friends for quite physically demanding work, also barter for future favours with friends.

Mole

richard p wrote:if you pay peanuts you get monkeys

Shouldn't that be elephants

I pay £10/ hour to the young lady that helps with my garden. She is well qualified, so I don't begrudge it. However, I have to ask a young lad to help with the heavy work, and pay him.
Having said that, it is almost impossible to get anyone to garden around here. There are plenty of landscapers etc, but no one that will come every couple of weeks or so.
My gardener is thinking of living in New Zealand (I envy her), so if she goes I'm right in the cart! As OH said on another post, I will have to try and train up the lad I get to help.

There are an awful lot of jobbing gardeners out there who are basically failed builders who can use a mower. I really struggled to find a skilled gardener to look after the grounds of a place where I used to work, everyone who came failed the 'how would you prune a dogwood?' test (the answer is not to take a chain saw to it at waist height!). In the end we found a retired guy by accident who does a really good job, I go back now as a customer and it look really nice.

It really depends on just what you think a 'gardener' is?
I have a lifetimes experience at gardening having my first allotment when 14, spent many of my hours reading and practising gardening. Turning organic in the 70's and attempting self-sufficiency ever since in several gardens over the years, often starting with a jungle. Working 'out' as I call it, working for money becomes a search - the right place, and being basically 'left to it' to work their garden in the manor that it needs without a boss - an Artisan. Having the right working environment is everything to me and is my first consideration - getting a worthwhile return for your labour will always be a struggle for the labouring class and in my experience the 'new wealthy' are the worst to work for.

I get asked a lot if I do private jobs as I work in a garden centre and even in the affluent south east, I am always amused at the money people think you will come and work for them for.

I charge a minimum of £15 p/h for private jobs, which I do via my hubbies business so we are covered for insurance and so on. I go for the more involved end - pruning, planting jobs and the like, so I think it's fair enough we get properly compensated for the skills we have - trained horticulturist and aborist respectively. If they won't pay that, they are welcome to ask elsewhere

Sue