How to price landscaping jobs and gardening work

Most gardening and landscaping businesses need two kinds of price:

• A day or hourly rate for maintenance, planting and clearance, where time is the main cost.
• A built-up quote for hard landscaping, such as patios, turf and fencing, where materials, hire and disposal matter as much as labour.

Both start from the same place: what your business costs to run, the pay you want and the hours you can actually bill in a year. Get that rate right and every quote you build on it is sound.

Use the last 12 months of bank statements. The usual lines are:

• Van and trailer: finance, insurance, tax, servicing and fuel.
• Machinery: mowers, strimmers, hedge cutters, a rotavator, and the servicing and replacement they need.
• Tip and green waste disposal charges.
• Waste carrier registration, if you take away other people's waste.
• Insurance: public liability, and cover for tools and machinery.
• Phone, quoting software and your accountant.
• Marketing: website, listings and leaflets.

If you carry waste you didn't produce, such as garden waste from a client's garden, you'll usually need an upper tier licence. In England, registration costs £191.02 and must be renewed every 3 years for £130.25, and trading without one can bring an unlimited fine. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own schemes.

This is what separates gardening pricing from most trades. You may be flat out from April to September and quiet from November to February, with rain days in between. Your rate has to earn enough in the busy months to carry the quiet ones.

Count the hours you could bill across the whole year, not a summer week. If your winter is half as busy, the sum below shows how much that moves your rate. Maintenance contracts and hard landscaping are the usual ways to fill the gap.

For 2026 to 2027 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland:

• Income Tax: 0% on the first £12,570, 20% up to £50,270, then 40%. Scotland has its own bands.
• Class 4 National Insurance: 6% on profits between £12,570 and £50,270, then 2%.
• VAT: registration is compulsory once taxable turnover goes over £90,000 in the last 12 months. Materials count towards turnover, so a few large patio jobs can take you there quickly.
• Making Tax Digital for Income Tax: from April 2026 for qualifying income over £50,000, April 2027 over £30,000 and April 2028 over £20,000.

If you take on help, employees aged 21 and over must get at least the £12.71 National Living Wage from April 2026, and employer's National Insurance is 15% on earnings above £5,000 a year. Build that into any crew day rate.

These figures are examples to show the sum. They aren't averages for gardeners and they aren't Ringzel customer data.

1. 1Working time: 46 weeks × 5 days × 8 hours = 1,840 hours.
2. 2Billable time: 80% of that, so 1,472 hours.
3. 3Break-even rate: £44,364 ÷ 1,472 = £30.14 an hour.
4. 4Add a 10% margin: about £33 an hour, or around £265 for an 8-hour day.
5. 5Winter check: if 12 of those weeks are only half as busy, billable time drops to 1,280 hours and the rate rises to about £38 an hour.

On £30,000 of profit, 2026 to 2027 rates give Income Tax of £3,486 and Class 4 National Insurance of £1,045.80.

The winter step is the one most gardeners skip. If you set your rate on a summer week, you'll be short every January.

Hard landscaping is priced by the job. Using the £265 day rate above, with made-up figures for a 20 m² patio:

The labourer's £130 a day is an example, above the £12.71 an hour National Living Wage for a worker aged 21 or over. Checkatrade gives a range of £65 to £475 per m² for patios depending on the material, with a 25 m² example at about £130 per m², so this quote sits in the middle. Your materials and dig decide where yours falls.

Homeowner cost guides show what customers expect to pay. Use them as a sense check:

Sources: Checkatrade's guides to gardener prices, grass cutting, turfing and garden clearance, and MyJobQuote's guides to hiring a gardener and fence installation.

The two gardener hourly ranges barely overlap, which shows how much rates vary by area and type of work. In the example above, the summer rate sits inside Checkatrade's range and the winter-adjusted rate above it, which is a sign to fill winter with contracts or bigger jobs rather than simply charge more.

Whichever you use, set a minimum charge for small jobs. MyJobQuote notes that a minimum charge applies to lawn mowing, because a 20-minute cut still costs you the drive and the unloading.

Put quotes in writing. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, what you tell a customer about the price can become part of the contract, and if no price is agreed, they only have to pay a reasonable price.

Regular maintenance smooths out the year. Price it from your rate, not from a guess:

1. 1Time a typical visit, including travel, loading and taking waste away.
2. 2Multiply by your hourly rate and add disposal.
3. 3Multiply by the visits a year, and decide whether winter visits are fewer or charged differently.
4. 4Spread it into a monthly fee if your customers prefer that, with a yearly price review written in.

For example, with made-up figures: a 1.5-hour fortnightly visit at £33 an hour is £49.50 a visit. Twenty visits in the growing season and six in winter is 26 visits, or £1,287 a year, about £107 a month.

1. 1Rerun your costs each winter, when you have time and before spring enquiries start.
2. 2Raise prices for new customers first and give regulars a month's notice.
3. 3Update your per m² prices when material costs change.
4. 4Track quotes won and lost. A diary full by March at last year's prices means you're cheap.

Spring is when you're busiest and least able to answer, and it's when most new enquiries arrive. A homeowner who can't get through rings the next gardener on the list. The cost of a missed call is the job's value multiplied by the chance they'd have booked you.

At the example patio quote of £3,720, an enquiry that becomes work one time in four is worth £930 a call. A maintenance customer worth £1,287 a year who'd have signed up half the time is worth about £644. Put your own numbers into our missed call calculator, and see why customers ring the next trade.