Pricing garden maintenance: per visit, per month or annual contract?

Garden maintenance has a problem most trades don’t: the work is seasonal, but the costs aren’t. In May you can’t keep up, in January you’re doing two pruning jobs a week — and the van, the insurance and the contributions still have to be paid all twelve months.

The pricing model you choose doesn’t only change the amount. It changes when the money comes in and how steady your cash flow is in winter.

The three models in one sentence each

• Per visit: the client pays for what was done, when it was done. The risk of a bad year is yours.
• Monthly subscription: a fixed amount for an agreed number of visits a month. The risk is shared.
• Annual contract: the whole year in twelve equal instalments. You take on the risk, but gain predictability and commitment.

Per visit: when it really fits

It’s the right model for the occasional client: one pruning a year, a planting job, a clean-up after a frost. The client doesn’t want a relationship, they want a job done.

It becomes the wrong model the moment the same client calls you every three weeks. Then you’re the one paying for the time spent scheduling, on the phone and travelling, with no commitment in return. Two charges should always be listed separately:

• Call-out charge — the journey and the time to get on site, stated over the phone.
• Minimum charge — a forty-minute visit costs the minimum, not forty minutes of labour.

Monthly subscription: the model that steadies cash flow

You agree a number of visits a month and a fixed amount. The client knows what they’re paying, you know what you’ll collect, and your schedule is booked from February instead of filling up with phone calls in April.

The trap is the wording “as many visits as needed”. It sounds generous and becomes a source of friction in May, when the lawn needs mowing every ten days. Write a number, not an intention: four visits a month from April to September, two in winter.

Annual contract: spreading an uneven year evenly

Here you price the whole year and split it into twelve equal instalments. The client pays in January for work that will happen in June — and that’s exactly the point: the work stays seasonal, the income steadies.

The calculation in four steps:

1. List the year’s jobs by season and how many times each one is done: mowing, pruning, feeding, spraying, seasonal planting, irrigation checks.
2. Next to each line, put the crew hours it really takes — not the ideal hours, last year’s.
3. Multiply by your hourly rate and add consumables: fertiliser, plants, bags, fuel, green waste disposal.
4. Divide by twelve. That’s the monthly instalment — and a number you can defend, because it comes from line items, not an estimate.

The fourth step is also why a contract gets signed: when the client sees the work broken down, they discuss the content. When they see only a figure, they discuss the figure.

What always stays outside the contract

• Weather damage — frost, hail, a tree down after a storm.
• New planting and redesigns — the contract maintains what’s there, it doesn’t create something new.
• Irrigation faults — routine checks are included, replacing a controller or a pipe isn’t.
• Treating pest or disease outbreaks — preventive spraying is scheduled, dealing with an outbreak is charged.
• Large-volume waste removal — a round of tree pruning won’t fit in the usual collection.

Write them into the contract as exclusions, with how each one is charged alongside. The awkward conversation happens once, at signing, instead of every time something happens.

Agronomists charge by a different unit

In agronomic advisory work the unit isn’t the visit but the area and the growing season: a charge per unit of land, per crop or per plant-protection programme for the whole season. The logic is the same, though — you price the number of visits and samplings that will be needed, not a feeling of how hard it will be.

From billing to getting paid

A contract doesn’t clear open balances on its own. Two practices that reduce them: a standing order or a fixed billing date instead of an invoice after every visit, and a balance visible per client so you don’t have to remember who paid in July.

When jobs and materials are logged on the garden’s record on site, the monthly instalment is based on real data and the next quote is written with last year’s figures in front of you — that’s how GardenPro works. Exactly what goes into each season’s schedule is covered in our seasonal garden maintenance schedule.

Conclusion

Charge the occasional client per visit, the regular one by subscription, and the one you want to keep with an annual contract. In all three, the price comes from line items and real hours — a price built on your own numbers holds up to haggling; a price picked by eye doesn’t.