How much should we pay a professional?

MrsO_3

Hello, I was wondering if you could help us.

We have moved to a house with a small garden (about 8ft X 12ft).
It is in a terrible terrible state - mostly paved but large weeds and bushes growing through the slabs. There is a raised bed walled off with loose cotswold type stone along the back fence of the garden - this is over grown too.

The garden is so bad that you can not even go in it. We have a toddler and want to clear all the plants and repave it so that she can put some outdoor toys there and play safely. We would need to put up a railing as the garden is up some steps and we would hate her to fall off.

We have tried clearing it ourselves, but we are overwhelmed We have nowhere to put the debris either as we have a terraced house.

We are thinking of asking for some local gardening companies to come and give us a quote for
* clearing the garden
* paving the garden
* installing a railing
however we don't know if we can afford it as we have no idea what would be a reasonable amount to charge for that job. How much do you think, roughly it might cost? Are we talking £100 or £1000. If it will be more than a few hundred pounds we would struggle.

Any ideas??? We would really love some help.
Mrs O

WestonDave

Most gardeners will charge around £100 a day and I can see that lot taking more than a day before you even start adding materials.

The question is how much can you do yourself with a bit of guidance.

I would start by getting hold of some Glyphosate based weedkiller to use on the growing weeds - if you can get it under that generic name its cheaper than Roundup. It doesn't affect the soil so doesn't leave residues around. A treatment of this will see most of the weeds start to die back in a couple of weeks - cost £5 for a bottle of it and maybe another £10/£20 for a pump pressure sprayer.

Is the paving seriously beyond saving, or if you got rid of the weeds, borrowed someones pressure washer (hire one if needs be for £40 for a day I'd guess) to clean them up, and then maybe got them reset and repointed (might be worth paying someone a day to do this) could they be saved?

Finally the railing - yes its nice to have a proper railing, but for a toddler who will be supervised (you won't leave her out there anyway!) you can make do with other options. We built fence in our old house by buying a couple/three of wooden planters (B&Q had them for £20 each) and fixing 2ft high pieces of trellis (square holes not diamonds) to the backs of them. The weight of the planters was enough to hold the fence until our son could be trusted on the stairs. Neighbours of ours simply used stakes (you can buy green plastic coated metal stakes) to hold up mesh fencing. In all cases you are looking at something to stop them diving over the edge on impulse before you can reach them or while you are distracted, not necessarily building Alcatraz to keep them in until they are 18!

I reckon with a weekend of graft and maybe £250 you could sort it to make it useable but if you want it show home perfect you might be nearer the £1000 mark.

Optimisticpair

I would do as WestonDave suggests - a pro now I'd guess using the cheapest materials and only 2 days labour £500 or more.

maypole

Sometimes you see advertisements for a local handyman who does garden clear ups, might be worthwhile looking in your local paper. Then once the backbreaking work is done, maybe then get a gardener to do the specialised jobs.

timbim_2

If you're running out of space to put the rubbish, get a hippo bag, quote from local skip company etc to get rid of everything you've got so far.

The glyphosphate advice is definitely sound, or you could get some pathclear, which you just dilute and water on from a watering can, that kills off the weeds.

If you've got a dry stone wall, spray all the weeds and clean it up, lovely sort of thing to have at the bottom of the garden.

dogstarheaven

http://www.groundwork.org.uk/ this is an organisation that i've seen offering a gardening service to the public in the notts area. not sure if they operate in other parts of the country, but you can try and enquire.
hope this helps

tim_n

Also try justfortheloveofit.org, a bit like freecycle but for labour. It's actually a labour exchange.

Put a post asking for help, you may get someone come out for free to help you clear it all out - you may have some other skill they or someone else needs, you show your gratitude by either helping that or some other person.

If you were nearby, I'd probably offer a hand, nottingham is a bit far though, it's about 3hrs by car driving at reckless speed.