What is reasonable to pay for yard care?

I am in Greenpoint, and am having my yard serviced by the women who designed it. It is a friend of a friend situatiion. Am I out of my mind, or does what works out to about $50 an hour seem exhorbanant for weeding and general maintenance? What are other people paying? I did some general google searching and it doesn’t seem that there are a lot of yard care services in Brooklyn. Could anyone recomend a good service in North Brooklyn?

deepBTUz

in Garden Design and Maintenance 12 years and 2 months ago

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anotherposter | 12 years and 2 months ago

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Having a person who really knows about specific plants and their needs (including how/when to prune various things) is pretty valuable.  It’s easy to just chop away at a shrub or tree, but you can do a lot of damage and end up with an ugly or dead garden if you don’t know what you’re doing.  So if the person is doing all aspects of plant care and you have more than some annual flowers and trees, that rate seems resasonable.  I wouldn’t expect to need them to work very often, so over a year, it shouldn’t be too bad.  I’d think that the person who designed it would have extra motivation to really make it look great.

Bond | 12 years and 2 months ago

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$200 a day seems exhorbitant?  May I ask what your pay rate is?  Sure you could get someone cheaper, but are you going to be upset when they can’t tell the difference between a weed and treasured plant and yank out grandma’s peony?

Springs | 12 years and 2 months ago

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Ask them if they have the following:   1\.  General Liability Insurance
2\.  Workmans Compensation 3\.  Truck 4\.  Fuel costs 5\.  Storage facility.   If they answer yes to most, then that rate is fair.   If they rates were much cheaper, most likely   1\.  Paying people off the books 2\.  No workmans comp 3\.  No liability