In article ,
says...
There are two sorts of people in the trade, it seems to me. Young
people with a family who will work hard and quickly, efficiently, and
to a plan. They will need the sort of figure you are quoting, maybe
up to £35 per hour, to deal with the plant investment and replacement,
training (seen the chainsaw regulations?), insurance, rubbish
regulations, time off and non-productive time. Then there are the
old sods who like pottering round in other people's gardens and who
charge up to £10 an hour, where they get bugger all done in that time,
and tend to do what they want not what you want. It's the difference
in trimming a hedge in 3 hours or 3 days, and whether the clippings
get taken away.

Which is best?

but its only cutting a bit of grass which would go on the compost heap and a
few twigs that would burn, not doing a big job.

kate


My son started doing work like this, but quickly found that unless
someone wanted him for at least a half day he could never get enough
hours in to make enough to keep body and soul together, he now avoids any
"small" tidying jobs as he would have to charge so much (he is still too
young to have the nerve!) he finds people will pay for large heavy jobs
so that is what he does, particularly clearing as he has a waste licence.
I know other people who do contract gardening for holiday lets, hotels
etc and they all do a minimum 2 hours at a time. So it sounds like you
need someone topping up a pension or similar (do check your insurance as
they are unlikely to have their own)
--
Charlie Pridham, Gardening in Cornwall
www.roselandhouse.co.uk
Holders of national collections of Clematis viticella cultivars and
Lapageria rosea

On 2 Jan, 09:43, Charlie Pridham wrote:
In article ,
says...


My son started doing work like this, but quickly found that unless
someone wanted him for at least a half day he could never get enough
hours in to make enough to keep body and soul together, he now avoids any
"small" tidying jobs as he would have to charge so much (he is still too
young to have the nerve!) he finds people will pay for large heavy jobs
so that is what he does, particularly clearing as he has a waste licence.
I know other people who do contract gardening for holiday lets, hotels
etc and they all do a minimum 2 hours at a time. So it sounds like you
need someone topping up a pension or similar (do check your insurance as
they are unlikely to have their own)

Yes, and you still do need to know that they know what they're doing.
There's still this attitude amongst employers of both jobbing and full
time gardeners that gardening is an unskilled job. They think and so
do a lot of the so called gardeners that pruning is just hacking a bit
off things now and again - they don't know why nor do they know what
to expect as a result and they don't watch the results (consequences)
of their pruning as they develop. That's just one example. A
significant amount of my work when I was self employed was rescuing
gardens after a few years of these people.