-the place for me to add my chats about gardening and horticulture
- plant chatter
- gardening chatter
- seasonal chatter
“That’s it!…that’s what I always wanted!”
Sometimes customers who would like improvements made to their garden don’t really know what they would like. Gardening can be a slowly evolving and improving picture and with limited funds may take a few seasons to get to achieve their goals. there’s no rush!
With my help, patience, understanding, horticultural knowledge and experience I’m able to be of assistance with customers improving and achieving their ideas.
And even not really knowing how a customer would want their garden improving as they have no real plan or concept, realises at the end of their gardening improvement journey through my assistance and guidance, the customer says to me, ‘that’s what they wanted all along!
And then the rains came!
(created 14th November 2025
Such a dry year really from March through to September here where I live.
Hosepipe ban with Yorkshire Water from June and still in effect in November although since the ‘rainy season’ has now started in late Summer, it’s now at a point when really we’ve had enough now!
It seems that storm Claudia (pronounced Clowdia!) crept up on us and in the second week of November albeit a wet week preventing me undertaking any gardening for customers, Friday 14th November has seen a complete deluge and relentless periods of rain which leads into Saturday 15th as well.
It really has been dry!
created 1st August 2025
Through this year and certainly here in North Yorkshire, it has been probably the driest on record. Reservoirs really low, consumption down due to hosepipe bans and customer’s gardens are just ticking over waiting for, should we now call it, ‘the rainy season’ to arrive. It will rain a plenty, just when?
It is surprising though how are plants have coped with little if any water since early Spring. Yes, I know we need to water our plants growing in pots and tubs in our gardens as such limited spaces dry out so quickly especially in the heat of the day (and overnight too!) yet plants and trees growing have to a greater extent coped with the dry weather and lack of water.
Water, water, everywhere
created Monday 21st July 2025
So at long last we have rain and rain oh and thunder and lightning accompanied by, yes, more rain.
We needed it. Apart from the minimal amount for the last four months or so there really hasn’t been any rain here in North Yorkshire and as the reservoirs are lower than usual we have recently encountered a hosepipe ban.
So over the weekend and today.. Bring it on I say. But, it’s just so much, far too much in one go. I was looking out over my garden during the daily deluges, which soon flooded over the lawn and onto the adjoining paving with roof guttering unable also to cope with the volume. I’m really not complaining…. We need a heck of a lot more but it’s a start.
And visiting my customer’s gardens today, the soil was basically dry to touch, yes, puddles in dips along pathways yet lawns and soil borders in a condition that you really wouldn’t have thought such a weekend deluge had taken place!
So usual gardening continued as required without even getting muddy wet!
Professional gardening – the poor relations?
created 19/7/2025
I say this, as my journey along as a professional and qualified horticulturist, and for ten years as a self employed gardener, I have found that the type of gardening undertaken isn’t as valued as say a plumber, electrician, or say, a car mechanic. As in £:p value, I mean.
I’m certainly not saying that the work undertaken isn’t valued by the customer, it most certainly is, in line with the regular feedback I get directly from my customers and I’m not saying either that I undercharge nor overcharge for my gardening services. I’m also not saying that the trades I’ve mentioned over charge, it’s my choice to engage, seek an estimate or quote first before asking trades to work in my home.
Yet as we ask for help from services ourselves we are obliged to pay what it costs. So, as an example, two toilets at home are leaking water constantly into the toilet bowls, costing money and wasting water. As this isn’t something I can repair, the usual plumber calls to make said repair. £100 +VAT and twenty minutes later, job done and paid! Task and finish.
Reasonable I suppose, however in chatting to the plumber, who knows I have own gardening business, I said “in your garden, if you wanted two rose bushes pruning and I said £50.00 each, what would you say?” – didn’t really need to ask him that question!
My point is that the work professional gardeners undertake should hold the same value in £:p as all other trades.
Now I do know that gardening can be static or flexible.
Static gardening
I see ‘static’ gardening as the very same work week in week out or even as one off jobs.
This would include mowing and edging lawns only where the same size of lawn and edging gets trimmed on a regular basis. The gardener explains how much this will cost per occasion (until the next price increase) and once agreed the cost is fixed. Same lawn, same edges, week in week out. So it’s fixed gardening. Hedges and tree work also fall into this category as with hard surface cleaning/ weedkilling.
So if the above plumbing repair was applied to say mowing and edging a typical modern housing estate garden of lawn(s) and edging which would be completed in 40 minutes, this would see a charge of £200, every fortnight for about ten months of the year. Now it can be said the skill and expertise of the plumber is what you are paying for. The very same ‘should’ be said for the gardener of their skill and accuracy and competence to mow the lawn resulting in a satisfactory finish, edging the lawns to leave neat crisp and clean lines and everywhere tidy. Yet it just wouldn’t and couldn’t happen and any professional gardener knows that there is a ‘cut-off’ point at which customers will pay for gardening, yet accept that other trades are just more expensive!
And of course I am in no way under selling the skills of such trades, these are the trades we need if we can’t do it ourselves and pay what it costs! and as our houses are kept safe once the repairs have been made we can sit having a cup ot tea moaning at how much it’s just cost looking over our neatly mown and edged and maintained gardens relaxing at how cheap that aspect of the household has cost!
Flexible gardening
It gets more complicated with flexible gardening. Yes, the lawn may need mowing and edging, yet there are borders of varying shapes and sizes with a myriad of plants needing such individual attention at different times of the year. On some visits, more gardening is needed, some visits less. So I feel it becomes harder to capture every task needing to be undertaken for a complete year and provide a fixed cost, per visit. And to capture all of that and then the customer occasionally asks for some additional yet minor amendments making it all more complex. And I feel that in capturing ‘all’ the required work and presenting to the customer a cost per visit would result in little business coming my way. Yet, as mentioned above, other trades are able to undertake their work and ‘we’ pay what we have to. So maybe the trades I mentioned above are similar to the ‘static gardening’ yet the ‘flexible gardening ‘ needs to just be that and as such charged on an hourly rate.
In saying the hourly rate, when I first started my self employment in 2015, ( following redundancy from a long term Local Authority employer as a Parks Manager) and being completely ‘green’ (excuse the pun) about self employment, just to get started up, I was tidying an overgrown garden for a friend who could only afford to pay £10.00 per hour. In reality, they could have paid more but it gave me a taster of what life would be like being self employed. My £10.00 per hour was soon raised to a more sustainable charge and once I had understood the intricacies of self employment has increased ever since.
“How much per hour?”
I’ve very recently found out that a ‘gardener’ currently charges £15.00 per hour! How? It’s easy for a potential customer to say “yes please” but then what are you getting for such a low hourly rate?
- cash in hand?
- unqualified?
- uninsured?
- using own tools?
- registered as a business?
- submitting a tax return?
- retired and wanting spends?
- taking twice as long to do the work?
Getting the right gardener
“Getting the right gardener that suits your needs for your garden and you” is more appropriate!
When you try to find a suitable gardener, maybe you get a recommendation from a neighbour or friend, yet trying to get one which meets your garden and your needs can be difficult. On first discussions and meeting, you really don’t know who will turn up or to what standard they will work to and the most important, to what results they will achieve.
I found that ‘word-of-mouth’ has been the best way I have expanded my business.
In relocating to North Yorkshire and starting from zero customers, I handed out flyers around the estate I live on. No success for over two years and then one day, one resident asked me if I was still gardening? Six years later I still visit their garden and along the way, their recommendation to others on the estate has seen me taking on eight gardens in total where I live.
In the mean time, on relocating here I visited the large DIY chain just outside York and on wandering around decided to have a look at their garden centre. I noticed a person struggling to load a bag of compost into their trolley, so I helped and offered to carry out the gardening shopping and help load it into their car. On chatting they realised I had my own gardening business, so on request I left my business card and without delay I was carrying out garden maintenance for nine of their friends in a local village. And continue to garden for six of those original customers.
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