If you’re already out doing the work and you’re not sure your prices are right, this page is for you. I’m Luke, a working gardener from Yorkshire. Pricing was one of the hardest parts for me to get right when I started, and I undercharged early on. Below you’ll find typical UK rates, but more importantly how to work out whether those rates actually work for your business. As a rough guide, many UK gardeners charge £20 to £35+ an hour or £180 to £300+ a day; the rest of this page is about whether those figures work for your business.
Not started trading yet? Read how to start a gardening business in the UK first.
By Luke Garside. Last reviewed: November 2026.
I’m not writing this from theory. I run a real, fully booked gardening business in the UK. I’ve made pricing mistakes, undercharged early on, and learned the hard way what works.
Everything on this site is based on real experience: quoting jobs, managing customers, covering costs, and building a sustainable round.
Gardener prices vary depending on location, experience and the type of work involved. As a rough guide:
These figures are only a guide and will vary by region, workload and travel time.
These indicative UK pricing ranges are informed by over ten years of experience running a gardening business, alongside published UK gardening cost guides. Actual charges vary depending on location, job complexity, business costs and whether VAT applies. Published guides are written for homeowners hiring a gardener, so they show what customers are quoted, not what a solo gardener takes home. For comparison, see Checkatrade’s garden maintenance cost guide and gardener prices guide, and MyJobQuote’s gardener cost guide.
Gardener rates can vary a lot by region. Prices are often higher in London and the South East, and can be lower in other areas. Local competition, travel time, and the type of customers you work for all play a part.
The key is setting a rate that works for your costs and your area, rather than copying what someone else charges.
Most of the confusion around gardener pricing comes from treating one question as if it were four. They sound similar but they have different answers.
The ranges on this page answer the first question. The rest of the page, and the guides it links to, are about the other three.
Many gardeners start out charging hourly without realising how many costs sit outside the hours spent on site.
Travel time, admin, quoting, tool maintenance and cancellations all reduce your real income.
The hours you spend in a customer’s garden are the only hours they see, so it’s natural to price around them. But they are only part of your working day. The rest is time you can’t put on an invoice:
Then there are the costs that come out before you see a penny: fuel, the van itself, equipment that wears out and needs replacing, insurance and tip fees. What’s left after all of that has to do two separate jobs. It has to pay you a proper wage, and it has to leave something in the business for the quiet months, the broken mower and the day you decide to put your prices up. Those are two different things. Plenty of gardeners pay themselves and call it profit.
A worked example (illustrative only, your numbers will differ)
Say you charge £25 an hour and spend six hours in a customer’s garden. That’s £150 for the day, which can feel fine. Now look at the whole day: an hour driving, half an hour loading and unloading, half an hour on a quote visit and messages. That’s eight hours worked for £150, which is under £19 an hour before you’ve paid for fuel, insurance, blades, strimmer line or the tip. Take those off and you can be left with something close to a basic wage, with none of the security.
Nothing about that job was priced wrong by the hour. The problem is the hours you couldn’t charge for. Price the same six hours on site as a day instead, somewhere in the £180 to £300+ range depending on the work, and the day rate starts to cover the whole day rather than part of it.
That is why so many gardeners move towards day rates or pricing by the job. If you’re deciding how to structure your prices, my guide on hourly vs day rates for gardeners in the UK goes through the trade-offs. If you want to set your own hourly figure properly rather than borrow one, the hourly rate guide shows how to work backwards from what you need to earn. And for what all this adds up to over a year, see how much a self-employed gardener can realistically earn in the UK.
Working all of that through for your own business, with your own figures, is what what your gardening business actually needs to earn is for. Doing it once a year across your whole regular round, with your own figures and customers, is the job The Gardening Business Year is built around.
As a rough guide, many self-employed gardeners charge between £20 and £35+ per hour, depending on experience, location and the type of work. To work out your own figure rather than borrow an average, see the self-employed gardener hourly rate guide.
Day rates often range from around £180 to £300+ depending on the work involved, travel time, and whether any waste removal is included.
Many gardeners move away from hourly pricing and towards day rates or pricing by the job, because it helps account for travel, admin time and the true cost of running the business.
Often, yes. Green waste disposal takes time and money, so it’s common to price it separately or include it as a clear add-on in the quote.
The typical rates above are the starting point, not the answer. Here’s the order I’d work through from here.
If you're already trading and the question is less "what should I charge" and more "are my current prices and customers actually working for the business", that's a yearly review rather than a guide, and it's what The Gardening Business Year is for.
If you’d like the pricing cheatsheet, the 30-day checklist and the client enquiry email template in one place, the free Starter Toolkit is below. The checklist suits gardeners getting started, and the pricing cheatsheet and enquiry template are just as useful once you’re trading.
Get the free toolkit