Gardening Rates

Can I pick everyone's brains please? What's a reasonable rate to pay a gardener? I recently had one charge me £30 for half an hour! All he did was strim some of the grass (we have a small to medium sized garden) and didn't even take the greenery away! Is that taking the piss? It certainly felt like it

 

Well it sounds like a rip off to me.
£60 an hour.

 

I pay 10 Euros an hour but don't know how it compares with UK prices. That's for doing shrub trimming too plus take the rubbish away. He's English by the way.

 

Albeit it was 15 years ago, my maintenance rate was £10 per hour. Rubbish removed if necessary, although most clients had compost and bonfire heaps. A lot depends on whether he's a qualified gardener or an odd-jobber. There were (and still are, I suspect) a lot of cowboys and chancers out there.

 

Also there will be some opportunists out there, taking advantage of the current situation.

I had a fitter come out the other week to service our compressors' I had already been charged £25 before he started any work, travel costs have to be taken into account.

 

There were two of them - the other one is his 21 year old son. But all they did was strim - not lawnmowing. And they don't take the greenery away - just leave it to rot in my garden.

 

It is, seeing as there's clumps of grass that have been missed & greenery that's been left which should have been removed.

 

My Dad had gardeners until a couple of years ago and they charged £25 per hour and took all the garden waste away with them. Hope this helps @jeanie smith . I think now the going rate around here is about £30 per hour.

 

Sorry to be a bit blunt here @jeanie smith ,but are you elderly or disabled?? I say this because my brother is disabled and he is on a scheme run by our local council for a fortnightly grass cut. It runs from ( roughly) March-Oct. You pay up front, can't remember how much but not a lot that I do know. Might that be worth you looking into?

 

My wife's uncle worked as a gardener for 40 years. He was employed by the city and his job was to plant, water, weed out and prune almost every plant imaginable on city grounds.
He mostly works for barbecue, schnitzel and beer, so his help is greatly appreciated. Although with Corona lockdowns we haven't seen him in over a year.

 

Back again..I've just checked out our Council's web site ,they will also undertake doing pruning, edging and low hedge trimming and it works out around £17 per hour.

 

Here in our region, there are programs working with mild to medium mentally disabled people such as trisomy 21. They trim the hedges, mow the lawn, help pruning plants, pluck the weeds or even build stuff like trellis or fences under supervision.
It allows them to earn their own money, gives them perspective and "brings them into the open" instead of locking them away in a care facility. Often they offer monthly "garden care packages" for older people and those who can't take care of their garden themselves anymore.