lawn
Lawn care and lawn maintenance
£30 to £70 a visit is what regular lawn and garden upkeep costs, rising to £45 to £90 in London. Taken across a year, a medium plot on contract runs £800 to £1,800. Day rates sit at £150 to £200 for a gardener and £180 to £280 for a landscape gardener.
What this covers
What it costs. £30 to £70 a visit is the national range for regular upkeep, and £45 to £90 across London and the South East. Full cost breakdown.
What the job covers
- Mowing to a set height through the season
- Edging and strimming what the mower misses
- Feeding and weed control as part of a programme
- Repairing bare and worn patches
- Keeping the same day and the same crew each visit
Worth knowing
There is no licence to garden and no register of gardeners. What carries legal weight is narrower: waste carrier authorisation for what leaves the garden, and a pesticide certificate for anything sprayed.
No statutory registration scheme exists for horticultural work
What is involved
A maintenance round is a calendar rather than a single job. March brings the first cut with blades set high, a spring feed and edges recut where winter has collapsed them. April to September is the mowing cycle, weekly or fortnightly, with borders hoed and shrubs kept off the paths. September is when the heavy work goes in: scarifying, aeration and overseeding while soil is still warm enough to recover. November through February is pruning, leaf clearance and repairs.
Pricing follows frequency. Fortnightly visits run £30 to £60 outside London and £45 to £80 inside it, while monthly comes to £40 to £70 and £55 to £90. Annual contracts on a medium garden land at £800 to £1,800, or £1,100 to £2,400 in the capital, and sensible ones name a visit count instead of a list of dates so a wet fortnight can be moved rather than lost. Hourly quotes span £20 to £45, and a two person team is £250 to £500 a day.
Mowing on its own is not lawn care, and the difference shows by the third summer. A round that includes feeding, moss control and autumn renovation keeps the sward dense enough to crowd weeds out on its own. Cut and nothing else, and thatch builds underneath, moss creeps in from the shady end and bare patches open under the trampoline. Work out which one is being sold, because the two look identical on a June invoice and £15 to £45 a visit apart on price.
Choosing someone for the job
How many visits does the year include, and what happens to one lost to weather? Feeding, scarifying and aeration often sit outside the round, so have them named in or out. Hedge cutting is usually separate again, at one or two visits a year. Do arisings go into your own bin or leave in the van at a charge? Read the notice period before signing anything.
Common questions
What should an annual contract include?
A named visit count, the mowing months, edge work, border weeding and leaf clearance as a minimum. Feeding and autumn renovation are frequently extra, at £150 to £400 across the year. Have hedge cutting priced separately, since it is one or two visits rather than part of the round.
Is a contract cheaper than booking visits one at a time?
Usually yes. A planned round saves the travel and set-up time that separate bookings duplicate, so a medium garden at £800 to £1,800 a year works out below the same visits bought singly. The catch is committing to a season in advance.