Cost of Gardening

If I can get my hedge man in he charges £200 a day.

And its well worth it.

That is £25 an hour give or take and that is what your man is charging too.

It is the going rate for moderately unskilled labour these days.

Double the minimum wage.

It equates to around £40,000 gross income a year, which is no bad wage when all is said and done. More if he works the hours.

OK the man will have expenses, but they are tax deductible. It's enough for a wife and kid and a mortgage.

And many people ask no more than that.

Give him a good tip for the work he has just done.

My Mother has a "gardener" who does it for a retirement job @ £15/hour. OK for cutting grass and weeding patio but he is no gardener and cannot be trusted unsupervised with pruning or cutting back overgrown shrubs - he will just hack them back to nothing or asked to remove some ivy he will identify everything with a green leaf as ivy :)

One advantage is he will take away anything he does hack back (grass cuttings go in a compost bin). The other advantage is that he is reliable and will turn up regularly, unlike some previous gardeners required for a couple of hours a week to keep a garden and lawn neat and tidy.

A couple of years back after a fairly lengthy say in hospital her garden became a bit unruly. A local family company was hired to tidy it up.

Before I read your second post in this thread I did some back-of-the-envelope jottings and came up with the same number you did. So "spot-on" I'd say.

I take TNP's points and would only add that running a proper business in a responsible way inevitably comes with overheads and IMO an inexperienced beginner is more likely to underestimate rather than overestimate them.

You seem delighted with his work so the bottom line - again IMO - is would you like him still to be in business in a year's time? Maybe even tell him (gently) that you would like him to still be working for you in a year's time and suggest he looks at his costs a tad more realistically in the meantime.

This scenario worked itself out many years ago when I went to a new, start-up electronics company to ask them to make batches of a module I had designed and prototyped. The owner offered me a price that I knew was far too low and I told him that it would protect my own interests to see that he charged me enough to ensure he was still in business to make my next batch and the next. No, he insisted: he would stand by his price. Reader: I never even received my first batch. He went bust before he had finished them.

Nick

Many thanks NP & alan_m :-)

I paid £100 and told him the surplus was a tip.

He was the hardest contractor to find following my move here and, so far, looks to be one of the best.

So he offered to do it for 60 pounds, and 25 for ongoing lawn mows. He would not offer a "robbing" price. Take the offer and keep him on.

Do not try and work out how much is business costs. By employing him long time you will be paying him back big time.

To me it is a question of morals and, as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, I'd like him to be there into the future.