I am told that I am getting ripped off by my collegue since I am paying $150/month. How much do you guys pay?

yes you are , unless you have a lot of speical flowers, bushes that require lots of care.

I stopped the gardner doing our neighbor’s lawn to ask about cutting the grass once since we didn’t have a mower yet. We have a front lawn and a back lawn. He said $30 for one visit or $100 for the month, so I had him come for 4 weeks. In addition to the mowing, he also weeded out some flower beds and trimmed some other things.

My gardner is ridiculously inexpensive.  He sends a guy out every other week and I pay $25 bucks A MONTH.  I don’t think he’s a very good businessman b/c I have paid this rate for 10 years.  Also the guy who actually does the work is getting ready to start his own business doing the same thing for about the same amount b/c he says the boss doesnt pay to maintain the equipment and is stingy about paying the gasoline.

If anyone is interested in the spanish-speaking guy who is getting ready to start his own business, give me a pm and I’ll send you his number.  His English is not very strong, but he understands what we are talking about or he can have a family member help with translation.

For the fee we pay, we have 4 average strips of lawn that he mows.  He also will remove the magnolia tree debris from the front lawns by raking, as well as raking/blowing/removing debris from a fairly good sized brick patio in front.  He tidies up by blowing and removing all lawn clippings.

We have also asked him to do the following for additonal/reasonable fees:
We have also used him for sod replacement as well as hauling away a big pile of dirt after we re-did our backyard.  He also will prune your rose trees/bushes and citrus correctly and now we have reasonable crops and blooms that we didn’t have when we used to do-it-ourselves w/ not a lot of real experience/knowledge.  Our neighbors had huge trees that drooped over our back walls that needed to be cut back as they caused a lot of issues with the pool.  They have been very unneighborly and would not take care of the isssue, so we also had our guy cut/haul the stuff that was on our side and he was reasonable in his charges.

He is honest and hardworking.  He lives in SA and has a young family.  He is dependable and has done special projects like spiffing up the yard/weeding the day before we had big parties at the house.

I love my garden.  I grow tomatoes, peppers, squash, melons and fruit trees.  Great hobby and home-grown tomatoes are the best.

Rip out that yard and bushes and put in a real garden.

alan - 18 July 2008 06:30 PM

I love my garden.  I grow tomatoes, peppers, squash, melons and fruit trees.  Great hobby and home-grown tomatoes are the best.

Rip out that yard and bushes and put in a real garden.

One time, watching my grandmother tend to her garden and being very impressed at her green thumb, I asked if I could have a plant to bring back to my dad’s and plant. She gave me a tomato plant. I planted it in the backyard in a random place, and it grew so robustly and it’s tomatoes were so gorgeous - my dad was so impressed and was convinced I had a green thumb (even though the plant died pretty shortly after I planted it because we didn’t pick the tomatoes off of it)! I spent the whole summer with the chore of watering the whole front and back yard. *shudder* Bad memories…lol. To this day I still kill plants by either giving them too much water or too little. Sigh…I envy your abilities!

irvine123 - 18 July 2008 12:02 PM

yes you are , unless you have a lot of speical flowers, bushes that require lots of care.

Thanks. My guy comes in every week. There are two of them sometimes. if you have a good one that is cheaper. please pm me the info. Much appreciated.

There have been a number of people who have asked me for the contact information and I’ve passed it around.  I would post it here… and i WILL post it here, when the guy breaks away to start his own business.  You never know who reads IHB and I don’t want the guy to get the axe because of something posted here by me.  Thanks for your understanding on this.

I was quoted 50 per visit for my medium size yard w/ a small lawn that needs to be mowed twice a month.  I just turned it into a rental, and didn’t want to have the recurring expense so I just put fake grass in the yard.  www.synlawn.com.  I calculated my payback period is 2 years, and looks better than real grass.

wow frebay, $50 per visit is a rip.  $80/month for a 6000sf lot - medium back yard, medium side yard, small front yard.  Gets mowed every week.  Lots of planters in the yard with trees, shrubs, flowers, etc.  They prune all those and rake and sweep up all the clippings.  All that for $20 per visit.

I think $20-$25 per visit is a good price depending on size and amount of landscaping. That puts you at $50 per month for every other week or $80 a month for every week.

It seems like others are within the same range. I’ve talked to other landscape maintenance people and in my area they are about the same, most a little more so I guess I’m getting good value from service. I called two professional tree services to come out and prune my trees and their estimate was almost double than what my guy would charge for that additional work.

Your best course of action would be to ask your neighbors what they pay and how they like their service. You will probably get a good rate and the person would appreciate the extra business in the same area he is already servicing so he may be reasonable.