Starting up a small gardening business

phill99

If you charge £15/hour as a qualified gardener who has invested in decent tools and machinery, you will effectively be earning less than minimum wage.


You need to take out days when you can't work (snow, rain, Christmas, holidays and sick days).


Then take out the cost of running your business which includes, but not limited to fuel costs, van insurance, van tax, servicing, tyre, depreciation, liability insurance, advertising and marketing costs, accountants and other professional fees, professional memberships, consumables, reinvestment in tools and equipment, etc etc etc.


The rule of thumb is that whatever you want to earn in a year, you need to divide this by 100 to get a daily rate that you should be charging your self out at. EG if you want to earn £25,000 a year, you need to be seeking £250/day, or £31.25/hour based on an 8 hour day.


The problem with gardening is that there are few barriers to entry and any one who knows how to start a lawn mower calls themselves a gardener, which sadly does the qualified and properly trained gardeners no favours at all.

Savvy_Sue

My absolutely wonderful gardener charges £15 per hour and I would happily pay double.

She doesn't usually work in January and February.

In school holidays she often works early evening.

I have no idea what her profit margin is, but she doesn't have a van and uses my lawnmower.

MallyGirl

It does depend on your area but £15 is about the going rate in my area of Berkshire. If you take your training further - which can be paid for by the business - then you have the option to offer higher value services. I did the RHS and RHS Advanced and then a BTEC in Garden Design all as a hobby. I did have a sideline garden design business for a bit but it spoiled the hobby so I closed it down.
£15 an hour for mowing, pruning etc will keep you going but if you can secure the occasional £500/£600 garden design or £250 planting plan then you have more earning potential.

phill99

Jon_Bake wrote: »

Congrats on your new gardening business. Before starting any business it would nice if you consult a business incorporation service. Because they will be able to help with everything from registering the business to finding a name for the business. I had taken the services of Ontario Business Central in Toronto for these services. Because of their help I didn't have to worry much about the business registration.

That will be really useful for a business based in the UK

DKLS

ambroze wrote: »

For example if I charge £15 an hour, roughly how much of that would go towards tax, insurance petrol and other costs etc and what would I be left with? Thanks

I think you need to refine your model a bit, your charges should be made up of:

Fixed costs + Variable costs + profit = Your Rate. (Always know your costs and your margins)

Ensure you budget for new tools, so include a small fee to cover replacing broken tools and new ones so you can take on more work.

My gardener charges £20 for the first hour and £15 for each subsequent hour, and he charged at cost for a hired stump grinder.

He is worth every penny and certainly earnt his money when I had him remove all traces of 6 mature conifers.