Gardening Maintenance

Hi everyone,

I am new to this forum. I am one half of a garden landscape and maintenance company based in Wolverhampton!

Wondered if anyone out there new what the going rate should be for regular monthly or fortnightly maintenance.

We have been doing this for 3 years and some people say we charge too much - others within the industry not enough! I am qualified to RHS level 2, we take away rubbish if the customer wants it and supply our own tools! I also do take into account the customers ability to pay without in any way 'patronising' them.

Any guidance/thoughts would be appreciated

 

I can't comment about your chosen field of expertise, but in general, a fairly common trap for small businesses to fall into is under-charging.

You try to undercut your competitors, and before you know it you are considered 'cheap and cheerful', and people pay your competitors more because they think as they are charging more, they must be better at it. You try to raise your prices to escape from this situation, and your existing customers suddenly think you're being greedy, so you lose them too.

When my mate and I had a go at being self employed years ago (a completely different area of expertise) we undercharged, naively thinking we'd do a couple of jobs for next to no profit and then word would get round about how good we were. All that happened was our clients decided that they were doing us a favour and consequently that they owned us. I drew the line when one lady would phone me up at home at about 11PM to discuss her project. My wife answered the phone and the client wouldn't say who she was, she was quite nasty to my missus. I came to the phone and told her in words of one syllable not to speak to my wife like that, and not to phone me after 8PM or before 9AM. She then phoned my business partner to rant at him about my attitude. After sever weeks of this, I told my mate I would stay on until their contract was complete, and not take on any new ones, then I was pulling the plug.

We finished on a profit, but undercharging really prevented us from making a good viable long term thing out of it. You obviously have to keep your customers sweet, but at the same time don't let them think they're doing you a favour or that they own you.

 

Thanks for that. I am going to stick with what I think is a fair price. We may not be the cheapest but we're not the most expensive either which is probably the best way to be.

There is a chap doing work for £7 per hour but his customers moan that they have to tie string to the plants otherwise he mistakes them for weeds and pulls them up!

 

Just a suggestion.

Your best bet would be to look up all the local garden maintenance companies in the yellow pages and ring them up for a ball park quote to do "your" garden. You could request all the services you intend to supply and work out an average price from the lot. You'd then be in a position to decide how much you should be charging.

 

.

 

Apologies - hit the wrong button!

My only experience of regular garden maintenance is through my elderly neighbour who has a man come once a week in the summer and once a fortnight in Spring and Autumn. He provides all his own tools and will cut grass, weed, trim hedges and trees and disposes of all rubbish.

I don't know that he has any formal qualifications and, having none in that area myself, wouldn't know whether he's doing a 'good' job or not, but the garden is neat and tidy and well maintained and, when he trims the leylandii hedge which surrounds ⅔ of the garden, he sets up 'guide' strings etc., so that the finished result is immaculate with a top flat enough to use as a table!

For regular maintenance my neighbour pays £25 per visit, the length of which varies according to what needs to be done - sometimes it's just a lawn trim which takes about 30 minutes, at other times he will spend a whole morning or afternoon. For larger jobs (such as the hedge trimming) there are additional costs, platform hire and/or perhaps a shredder for example.

Seeing the standard of his work, I asked him to totally remove an 8' high Arbutus unedo (Strawberry tree to me!) which he did. He spent one afternoon cutting the thing down and taking away all the rubbish, the next morning his colleague arrived with a mini excavator to dig up the roots and a chain saw to cut the roots into manageable pieces - the cost included hire of the digger and the colleague who's professionally trained to use both pieces of equipment. Considering the cost of digger hire, soil to fill in the hole and what amounted to 1½ day's work (not to mention the fact that it poured with rain throughout!) I thought £150 was very reasonable. He also came back several times to ensure the ground had 'settled' evenly.

My only bit of 'advice' (if such it can be called) would be, never 'charge by the hour' - my brother-in-law was told this on his small business course - evidently it looks much more professional to quote a price and leaves you less open to accusations of 'time wasting'.

 

I've been charging between £8 - £10 per hour cash in hand (naughty!) this year for a small gardening round - doing fairly routine things for friends-of-friends type of thing.

Next spring I'm setting up properly and plan to pitch at £12 - £20 per hour (or the equivalent per job) depending on how rich I think the client is!

 

Some interesting comments here

You mention about taking away rubbish for customers - this is certainly a big bonus for many people and you should think about charging extra for this.
You will probably need a Waste Carriers Licence and will need to think carefully about where you store or dispose of this material

 

Getting the right price is not only about what the customer can pay, but also what you can do the work for. When I ran my business I was charging 12.50 an hour per person, but I also did work on a price. Around 30 quid for a standard front and back garden. This was once a fortnight.

You will need a waster carriers licence, to take rubbish away, and I think your local council will assist you with this.

I found that attention to detail is the most important thing. Not to leave a big line of grass clippings on the drive or something like that but also asking the customer what is their priority. They are the people who are living there, and see the little things that need doing, but you may over look.

Hope this Helps!

 

My property had lots of pine trees that i wanted to remove. I cut them down and removed one stump by digging it out. This one stump took two days to remove and was very difficult. With the rest I dug around them about a foot deep and large enough to use my chain saw, I cut the trunk off as close to the bottom of the hole as I could, cut through any exposed large roots, and covered the rest with soil. Out of sight, out of mind. They can now decay at their own speed without being in my way.