Written for gardeners and garden maintenance rounds, landscapers, grounds maintenance contractors, tree surgeons and arborists, lawn treatment, fencing and paving firms, including winter hedge, tree and gritting work, in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The short version
- Cost labour on hours you can sell.Divide yearly pay, employer National Insurance and pension by the hours left once holiday, rain and down days come out.
- Divide for margin, never add.Add your own rate and running costs per chargeable hour, then divide by one minus the margin. Example: adding 20% gives only a 16.7% margin.
- Price contracts from timed visits.Time each task, price travel separately, add tipping at your margin, then spread the year over 12 equal monthly direct debits.
It is tempting to price from what someone else charges, or from an hourly wage with a bit added. Both miss the same thing: you pay a crew for far more hours than it can charge for. Holidays, rain days and down days still cost you, and so do the van, the mowers, the insurance and the tipping. Work from the full cost of an hour you can actually sell, and the price follows.
Step one: what a productive hour of labour costs
Take an operative's yearly pay and add employer National Insurance and pension. Then divide by the hours they are productive, not the hours you pay: take out holiday and the weeks lost to weather and down days. The figures below are indicative assumptions, not market rates.
| Wages: an assumed £14.00 an hour, 40 hours, 52 paid weeks | £29,120 |
| Employer National Insurance, assumed at 15% above £5,000 | £3,618 |
| Pension, assumed at 3% of gross pay | £873.60 |
| Full yearly cost | £33,611.60 |
| Cost per productive hour | £19.82 |
£33,611.60 / 1,696 productive hours, which is 40 x (52 weeks less 5.6 of holiday less 4 of weather and down days)The National Insurance and pension inputs are assumptions; use your own payroll figures. As of Oct 2026.
In the worked example, pricing at £16.16 means the 1,696 hours an operative works recover £27,407.36 of a £33,611.60 cost: about £6,200 a year short on one person, before any margin.
Step two: the crew hour
A crew hour is everyone on the job plus the kit that comes with them. Count your own time at a target rate, because it is a cost too. Then spread the van, machinery, fuel, insurance and overheads over the hours you expect to charge in a year, not over every hour in the year.
| Owner at a target £22.00 an hour | £22 |
| Operative, per productive hour | £19.82 |
| Van, machinery, fuel, insurance and overheads: £30,000 a year over 1,500 chargeable crew hours | £20 |
| Full cost per crew hour | £61.82 |
| Price per crew hour for a 20% margin | £77.28 |
£61.82 / 0.8 = £77.28, or £38.64 a person-hour
Divide, do not add. In the worked example a 20% markup charges £74.18 a crew hour, only a 16.7% margin; a 20% margin needs £77.28, a 25% markup.
Step three: a year of maintenance visits
Price a maintenance contract from measured visit times, not from a feel for what a visit is worth. Time your crews by task, machine width and site type, price from those rates, and price travel separately. Add tipping, priced at your margin, then spread the year into 12 equal monthly payments by direct debit so the client keeps paying through the winter.
| 30 grass visits at 1.25 crew hours: 37.5 crew hours at £77.28 | £2,898 |
| 6 hedge and border visits at 3 crew hours: 18 crew hours at £77.28 | £1,391.04 |
| Tipping: 20 loads at £18 (£360 of cost), priced at a 20% margin | £450 |
| Annual price, ex VAT | £4,739.04 |
| Monthly direct debit over 12 months, ex VAT | £394.92 |
£4,739.04 / 12With VAT at 20% the client pays £5,686.85 a year, or £473.90 a month. As of Oct 2026.
Projects, benchmarks and price reviews
- For a project, survey the areas, levels, soil volume, disposal cost and machine access before you price.
- Price materials, labour, hire, waste and a contingency for hidden services or poor ground, and fix the price for 30 days.
- No published survey of UK landscaping prices is reliable enough to benchmark against, so test your rates against your own won and lost quotes by job type.
- Track revenue per crew hour and gross margin by service line, so you can see which work actually pays.
Use CPI or another named index in the price review of any contract that runs for more than a year. CPI inflation was 3.1% in the 12 months to August 2026 (ONS, released 16 September 2026). As of Oct 2026.
Asked in Greymill
Hours he can work: 40 x (52 less 5.6 less 4 weeks) = 1,696
His cost an hour: £33,611 / 1,696 = £19.82
Crew hour cost: you £22 + him £19.82 + van and kit £20 = £61.82
Price for a 20% margin: £61.82 / 0.8 = £77.28
Where your way slips:
Over 2,080 paid hours he looks like £16.16 an hour, but he only works 1,696.
Adding 20% is a markup, not a margin: £61.82 plus 20% is £74.18, only a 16.7% margin.
Together that is £22 + £16.16 + £20 = £58.16, plus 20% = £69.79: £7.49 short on every crew hour.
Want me to turn this rate into monthly direct debits for your maintenance contracts?
Ask it about your own business
Paste this into Greymill with your own figures, and Cash & Profit works it through for your business.
I run a landscaping or gardening business in the UK. My crew is [number] people. Each operative earns [hourly rate] for [hours] a week, I want to pay myself [target hourly rate], and my van, machinery, fuel, insurance and overheads come to about [yearly cost] over [chargeable crew hours] a year. We lose about [weeks] a year to holiday, weather and down days. Work out my full cost per crew hour and the price for a [margin] margin, then price this maintenance contract as a monthly direct debit: [visits, tasks, crew hours per visit, tipping loads].
More for landscaping and gardening in the UK
- Getting through December to February when the grass stops and the tax bill landsLandscaping cash is lowest in the winter, just as Self Assessment falls due on 31 January, so size the gap and smooth your income before the season ends.Read the lesson
- Going over the VAT threshold, a developer's zero-rating and a builder's CIS: what goes on my invoice?Most landscaping is simply standard-rated, but a strong summer can take you over the VAT threshold, and work for builders and developers brings in zero-rating on new homes and the Construction Industry Scheme.Read the lesson
- Spraying weeds, carrying green waste, running red diesel and towing a digger: am I legal?Spraying, green waste, red diesel and towing each need a certificate, a registration or a check, most leave a record you are expected to keep, and fences, front drives and digging near a neighbour carry planning and notice rules.Read the lesson
- Quotes agreed in the client's garden, plant guarantees and long contracts: the terms that cost landscapers moneyA quote agreed at the client's home, an open-ended plant guarantee and a long contract priced flat can each cost you the profit on a job, and each has a fix.Read the lesson
- Taking on summer labourers without a holiday pay bill or a right-to-work fine laterSeasonal crews bring three traps: holiday for irregular hours, right-to-work checks that now reach individual subcontractors, and visa routes that do not cover landscaping.Read the lesson
- Winning more domestic rounds and council grounds contracts, and pricing the staff who come with a re-tenderDomestic rounds grow street by street on honest reviews, public and housing grounds work is won on paperwork as much as price, and a re-tender can hand you the outgoing contractor's staff.Read the lesson
- I've found a nest, knotweed or a protected tree halfway through the job: what now?Some discoveries turn a garden job into an offence the moment you carry on, and the law binds the contractor as well as the client; two safety stops apply to every tree and verge crew too.Read the lesson
Open the interactive lesson · Every landscaping and gardening lesson · What Greymill knows about the trade
Sources
The primary sources behind this lesson, checked Oct 2026.
- Class 1 secondary (Pricing, crew costs and margins: the maths)
- Statutory entitlement (Pricing, crew costs and margins: the maths)
- Bank Rate and decision dates (Pricing, crew costs and margins: the maths)
- Consumer price inflation, UK: September 2026, released 21 Oct 2026 (Pricing, crew costs and margins: the maths)
- ASHE Table 14 (occupation, 4-digit SOC) (Pricing, crew costs and margins: the maths)
- Deadlines (Cash, seasons, equipment and software)
- FRC, FRS 105 scope and FRS 102 Section 1A applicability (Cash, seasons, equipment and software)