What a gardener costs on Teesside in 2026

Last updated: August 2026.

The three ways garden work is priced

Almost every quote you receive will use one of three models, and knowing which one you are looking at makes comparison far easier.

By the hour suits open-ended work where nobody can predict the finish: weeding a neglected border, general help, pruning that depends on what is found. It is honest but unbounded, so agree a maximum before work starts.

By the visit suits regular maintenance. The scope is fixed, the interval is fixed, and both sides know what the season costs. This is the model that saves people money over time.

By the job suits everything with a defined endpoint: hedge cutting, clearance, planting, jet washing. It puts the risk on the contractor, which is why a job price is usually a little higher per hour than an hourly rate and worth every penny of it.

What actually moves the number

Waste volume

This is the biggest hidden cost in the trade. Cutting a mature leylandii run or clearing an overgrown plot generates cubic yards, not bin bags, and tipping green waste at a licensed transfer station costs real money. A quote of £180 for a clearance that will produce three loads is not a bargain, it is a quote from somebody who has not thought about where the waste goes, or who intends to dump it.

Access

The difference between a driveway alongside the garden and a rear lane 60 metres away is often 30% on the price. Terraced streets in Middlesbrough, Stockton and Hartlepool frequently mean carrying waste through the house or barrowing it down an alley, and stepped hillside gardens at Saltburn mean carrying everything.

Height

Anything above roughly 2.5 metres needs a platform or pole equipment and a second person for safety. That is the point at which a hedge price roughly doubles, and it is why a 3.5 metre leylandii run is a different job from a 2 metre one of the same length.

Frequency

The counter-intuitive one. More frequent visits cost less per visit and often less per year, because nothing ever grows out of control. Six weeks of growth in May takes four times as long to deal with as two weeks of it.

What a year actually costs

For a typical Teesside semi with a lawn, two borders and one boundary hedge, a realistic annual budget looks like this: fortnightly maintenance from March to October at £45 a visit is around £720; one annual hedge cut at £120; a patio wash every other year at roughly £120; and £100 or so of plants and mulch. That is about £950 to £1,000 a year for a garden that always looks looked after.

The alternative pattern, doing nothing and booking a rescue each spring, typically runs £350 to £600 a year for a garden that looks presentable for six weeks and rough for the rest. The maintained route costs more but buys a great deal more.

Questions worth asking before you accept a quote

• Is green waste removal included, and are you registered as a waste carrier?
• Does the price cover the front garden as well as the back?
• How many visits does the season price include, and which months?
• What happens if a visit is rained off?
• Do you carry public liability insurance?

All five have short answers, and a contractor who is comfortable giving them is usually comfortable doing the work properly too. When you are ready, the maintenance page covers rotas in more detail and the clearance page explains how volume-based pricing works.