As a rough starting point, most UK gardeners charge somewhere between £20–£35 per hour for general maintenance, or £180–£300+ for a full day, with a sensible minimum visit charge on top to cover travel and setup. The right number for you depends on your costs, your area and how you structure the work — this guide walks through how to work that out properly.
Want a structured way to work out your numbers? Explore the Pricing Toolkit →
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.
"Garden maintenance" covers a lot of ground — mowing, weeding, borders, pruning, general tidy-ups, and clearing overgrown gardens. Your rate depends on which of these you're doing, how efficiently you work, your local competition, and your actual running costs. Copying a number you saw online or heard from another gardener is how a lot of people end up undercharging.
For the wider picture on UK gardener rates generally, see my guide on how much a gardener should charge in the UK.
Hourly pricing is simple and works well for ongoing regular maintenance rounds, where the customer knows roughly what a visit involves. Fixed pricing works better for one-off jobs — a garden that's gone unmanaged for months isn't the same job as a tidy lawn round, and pricing it by the hour risks either scaring the customer with an open-ended cost or underselling your own time.
I go into this in more depth in my guide on hourly vs day rates for gardeners in the UK.
A 45-minute mow-and-tidy still costs you real travel time, fuel and setup — the same as it would for a longer job, just spread over less billable work. Many gardeners set a minimum call-out charge, often somewhere in the region of £40–£60, to make sure short visits still cover those fixed costs rather than quietly losing money.
The core tasks that make up most garden maintenance work include:
The first four are usually straightforward to price into a regular round. The last two — a general tidy-up or an overgrown garden — often justify a separate, higher price because they take longer, produce far more waste, and are harder to estimate accurately from a distance. If it's closer to a genuine clearance than routine maintenance, see my dedicated guide on how much to charge for garden clearance in the UK.
Lawn mowing specifically has enough of its own pricing quirks — minimum charges, route density, overgrown first cuts — that it's worth its own guide: see how much to charge for lawn mowing in the UK.
Your hourly or day rate needs to cover more than the time you're actually working in the garden. A sustainable price is really made up of:
You don't need a spreadsheet for every job, but it's worth genuinely thinking through each of these when you're setting your baseline rate rather than just picking a number that feels roughly right. Green waste disposal in particular has a real cost — tip fees and the time to load and unload waste add up quickly on bigger jobs.
Regular maintenance customers are usually worth pricing a little more competitively — you know the garden, the visit is efficient, and reliable repeat work is valuable in its own right. One-off jobs, especially first visits to an unfamiliar or overgrown garden, carry more risk and unknowns, so it's reasonable to price them slightly higher or quote a fixed price rather than an hourly estimate.
If you're ever working with someone else, don't simply halve your usual hourly rate. Two people finishing a job in half the time still costs you two people's worth of overhead, fuel and equipment wear — price the job itself, then work out what that means per hour once you know how long it actually took.
These are illustrative examples only, based on the typical UK ranges already covered on this site — not a claim about what any specific job should cost. Use them as a starting point for your own numbers, not a fixed price list.
Short regular maintenance visit
45 minutes of mowing, edging and light tidying on an established round. At a £25/hour rate this would work out under £20 on time alone — which is exactly why a minimum charge (around £40–£60) matters here to cover travel and setup.
Half-day general tidy-up
Around 4 hours covering mowing, weeding, borders and light pruning. At £25/hour that's roughly £100 in labour, before adding any waste disposal if green waste needs taking away.
Larger one-off maintenance job
A full day bringing a neglected garden back under control — cutting back overgrowth, weeding borders properly, and a full tidy. At a day rate of £180–£300, priced as a fixed job rather than hourly, to reflect the extra time, effort and uncertainty involved.
Job involving green-waste removal
Any of the above, plus a separate waste charge to cover tip fees and the extra loading time — often quoted as a clear add-on line rather than folded invisibly into the main price, so the customer can see exactly what they're paying for.
For a broader look at how pricing decisions affect your overall income, see my guide on how much a self-employed gardener can earn in the UK.
Most gardeners find it easier to raise prices for new customers than existing ones, but leaving regular customers on an old rate for years eventually costs you as your own overheads rise. A short, polite note giving reasonable notice — a month or more — is usually enough. Customers who value reliable work rarely leave over a fair, modest increase; the ones who do were often priced too low to begin with.
Garden maintenance pricing isn't about finding one "correct" number — it's about understanding your own costs well enough to set a rate that's sustainable, then applying it consistently. If you want help turning this into confident quotes on real jobs, my guide on how to quote gardening jobs in the UK covers that in more detail.
Most self-employed gardeners charge somewhere between £20 and £35 per hour, depending on experience, location and the type of work involved.
Many gardeners do, often in the region of £40–£60, to make sure short visits still cover travel and setup time rather than being unprofitable on their own.
Overgrown or first-visit gardens usually justify a higher, often fixed price rather than your normal hourly rate, since they take longer, produce more waste and are harder to estimate accurately in advance.
It can be included or itemised separately, but it should always be accounted for — green waste disposal has a genuine cost in time and tip fees that's easy to underestimate.
If you want a clearer starting point, you can download the free Gardening Business Starter Toolkit below.
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