How to find a good gardener

Write down the job before ringing anyone

Vague briefs produce vague quotes. Pacing the garden and noting what actually needs doing, with rough measurements, turns a conversation about tidying up into a priced list: 18 metres of hedge at two metres tall, 40 square metres of lawn, six shrubs to be lifted, one border replanted.

Frequency belongs in the brief too. A fortnightly maintenance round, a one off clearance and a landscaping project attract different trades at different rates, and most contractors specialise in one of the three. Deciding which one the garden needs before making the first call saves two wasted visits.

Checks that cost nothing

The Environment Agency register at environment.data.gov.uk is free, public and takes under a minute. Searching a business name or registration number confirms whether the person taking waste away is registered to do it, and shows the tier. Natural Resources Wales lists gardeners, landscapers and tree surgeons carrying green waste as lower tier, so a free lower tier registration, with a number starting CBDL, is the normal one for this work.

Insurance is the second free check. Public liability cover is voluntary in law but carried by most established gardeners, and the certificate names the insured business, the limit and the expiry date. Employers' liability is compulsory for anyone with staff, at a minimum of £5 million. Companies House confirms whether a limited company exists and how long it has traded.

Certificates matter where the work is regulated. Spraying a lawn needs pesticide certification, and chainsaw work needs a City and Guilds or Lantra certificate of competence. Lantra runs a public certificate checker where the holder's name, date of birth and postcode confirm a card is genuine.

References and finished work

Two client references a year old beat ten fresh ones. A garden looks tidy the day after any visit; what matters is whether hedges held their shape through a season, whether a lawn recovered after scarifying, and whether the gardener turned up in February as well as June.

Photographs of completed projects are worth asking about specifically: which part did this contractor build, and was the planting theirs or a designer's? Trade accreditation schemes run by the Arboricultural Association, the British Association of Landscape Industries and the Association of Professional Landscapers all publish searchable member lists, and all three involve someone inspecting finished work. Plenty of capable sole traders choose not to join, so a register is one source of evidence among several.

Comparing quotes properly

Citizens Advice recommends three written quotes from three site visits, and asking for a quote matters because a quote fixes the price while an estimate is an informed guess. Under section 50 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, anything a trader says or writes about the service becomes a term of the contract once the customer relies on it.

Compare scope before price. A quote that includes waste removal, sand for the joints and two follow up visits may be better value than a lower one that leaves all three out, and green waste disposal is charged separately by most gardeners at £20 to £50. Businesses below the £90,000 VAT threshold that are not registered charge no VAT, so compare the totals each quote asks you to pay, VAT included.

What a sound arrangement looks like

Citizens Advice and Which? both describe the same basics: a written quote, a business address, a choice of ways to pay and time to decide. A modest deposit is another: 25 per cent is the ceiling Citizens Advice suggests, and it should cover materials being bought in for the job.

A contract agreed in the customer's home carries a 14 day cancellation right, and the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 require the trader to give that notice in writing, with work inside the 14 days starting only at the customer's request. Taking away rubble, old fence panels or soil needs upper tier registration rather than the free lower tier.