How Often Should You Mow
Normally weekly mowing is the rule, but some lawns need cutting more often. Other lawns will grow more slowly and might need cutting only once every ten days or two weeks. Generally, dont cut off more than one third of the grass blade. More than that may harm the grass. Let the length of the lawn be the judge, NOT when the lawn was last mowed.
How Do You Choose The Right Lawn Care Provider For You
You may never know by looking at someone that they are going to provide high-quality lawn care services, but you can certainly improve your chances in a few easy ways. The first thing you can do is ask for recommendations. Talk to family and friends and other people who hire someone to mow their lawns.
If they like the job they are getting from their lawnmower, then they will be happy to recommend them. Whats more, many lawn care professionals are only too happy to receive referrals from their loyal client base.
If you dont know anyone who hires someone to take care of their lawns, then look online. Check out online reviews for local lawn care companies and find out what people are saying about specific people, companies, and franchises.
Rates Vary A Little By Location
Much of this depends on what part of the country you live in.
For example, pricing for lawn maintenance services in warmer climates such as Florida or California are more competitive than they are as compares to cooler climates.
You might be wondering why this is?
Well, think about it. The lawn care business is more stable in climates where the grass needs cutting year-round. Naturally, in an area where grass grows for shorter seasons, lawn care services have to figure out how to make ends meet, during the wintertime.
Put another way, lawn mowing services are treated more as a commodity in warmer climates.
And more as a luxury service in Northern climates.
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My Lawn Is Beyond Hope What Can I Do
A lawn that is full of unwanted plants will take a long time to pull back round into something worth looking at so one option is to take the grass up and start again with fresh turf which will be well looked after and weed-free. This may also be a cheaper option if you compare it with the cost of hours of intensive lawn care and maintenance plus the outlay on weed treatments and lawn food.
How Much Do Lawn Care Services Cost In New Zealand
Then, we get to the nuts and bolts. How much do lawn mowing services cost in New Zealand? Thats the million-dollar question.
Every lawn care provider will establish different costs that work for them. Some set their prices based on whether they use a ride-on or push mower if they have to travel out of their way, and the condition of the lawn.
A small lawn can be in the vicinity of $25, $30, $40, or $50. A medium or large yard, on the other hand, can be over $50 including or excluding GST, depending on how the person you hired had structured their invoice or quote.
Pricing can also differ depending on whether its a one-off lawn mowing service or you become a regular customer.
Pricing may also vary and become a set hourly rate if you have a property with steep slopes or you require mowing services on a lifestyle block, farm, field, business, or somewhere other than your residential address. Its worth talking to your local lawn care expert about their rates and conditions for service. As a bare minimum, you can expect a charge of $25 including or excluding GST, and with possible travel costs.
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Lawn Care Service Prices
Lawn care professionals provide many different service outside of just mowing. Depending on where you live, and how long its been since your yard has been maintained, some additional services may be needed. Let’s take a look at some common lawn services and their prices:
- Lawn Mowing: Average cost $25 – $50
- Tree Trimming: Average cost $250 – $500
- Lawn Aeration: Average cost $80 – $175
- Lawn Weeding: Average cost $20 – $40 /hour
- Lawn Winterization: Average cost $350
- Lawn Fertilizing: Average cost $40 – $60 /application
- Lawn Seeding: Average cost for professional $700
- Leaf Removal: Average cost $50 – $80
- Landscaping: Average cost between $3,000 and $15,950
What Influences The Prices For Lawn Mowing Jobs
Time, Place, Accessibility and Size
The typical lawn mowing cost is affected by several factors, some of which weve previously mentioned in the last section. Supply and demand tend to shift, depending on where you live.
The size and accessibility of your lawn can play a part in increasing prices due to the difficulty of the job, requiring different mower sizes to be utilized.
The time of the year can also be a big factor in whether you can take advantage of seasonal discount prices when demand might be slowing down.
Equipment Models
Lawn mowing services may also charge you depending on the equipment they use. Electric lawn mower variants may not cost that much but make use of your electric line to charge up instead.
Gas lawn mower models will have to consider gas usage and possible maintenance costs, raising the price but providing a more effective clean sweep of the lawn.
If your lawn only needs the barest of maintenance, they may opt to use a lawn cutter instead, which might lead them to charge you less for equipment use.
Cordless mowers allow a more quiet and compact way of trimming grass, although the limited battery life can be a barrier to a thorough cutting.
Ride on mower prices are the highest-prices of lawn cutter models, reaching up to $6,999 per unit, but arguably give the most convenient services provided your lawn has reasonable ease of access.
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How To Choose The Right Lawn Mowing Service
In order to choose the right lawn mowing service for you, you will first need to establish your specific needs. If you are after a quick and easy one-off lawn mowing, then you can risk taking the lowest quote. Whereas, if you are looking for an ongoing lawn mowing service you should lift the bar. You will want to entrust someone who will always arrive on time, work fast yet efficiently and ultimately improves your lawns health and look.
At Service.com.au we suggest choosing a lawn mowing service who also provides general garden maintenance. Such as fertilising, weed control, aerating and so on. So if you do require additional services they are readily available, rather than having to hire another company.
You can browse through a number of professional lawn mowing companies or individuals on Service.com.au. You will find easy access to a variety of professionals within your proximity.
You should consider whether you want to enter a contractual agreement or work on a more casual basis. Some people just want a few months of help restoring their lawn back to good condition and others may require an ongoing service all year round.
Dont Forget To Price Special Services And Materials Differently
Special services like mowing, mulching, and weed control and fertilization application should be priced accordingly, rather than lumped into one cost.
Jason explains that these are actually very different services because they require different types of labor.
Weed control and fertilization, for example, is typically a one-person operation, so your labor is cut downand that one person can actually generate a lot more revenue than one person can mowing, he explains.
But there are expenses in the weed control: the actual fertilizer, weed control product, labor, and drive timeall those things are factors.
The main thing Im concerned with is how big the actual yard is, and the actual amount of turf that Im going to be applying the fertilizer or herbicide to. The bigger the yard, the more of the product Im using. Thats my biggest expense, Jason explains.
So, Im pricing strictly based on the square footage. I need to get an accurate measurement of the square footage of the lawn so that I know how to price it. Then I use a pricing chart that shows square footage from 2,000 square feet all the way up to 30,000 square feet.
I can then look at my pricing chart and give them a price quickly. So as the square footage goes up, the price per square foot actually goes down.
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Turn Your Customers Into Ambassadors
When youre out of ways to promote your business, let your happy customers do it for you. Here are a few ways to make your customers ambassadors that help you get more business:
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Set up a referral program
Many businesses have a customer referral program that offers a special service or discount to customers who refer people they know. Referral programs work best when you have well-prepared scripts to ask for referrals, and when you listen to your customer base to find out what a valuable incentive would be.
Referrals arent just proven to be effective at getting new clientstheyre the best way to get quality clients who are more likely to stay with you, since theyre choosing you based on recommendations from people they trust.
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Collect feedback
Social proof is a must-have tool in your marketing and sales. Praise and testimonials from your existing customers will be highly effective at attracting new customers. Its rock-solid proof that you deliver quality service.
One of the best ways to ask for testimonials is to ask for genuine feedback. Dont just ask for praise from your customersif you show them youre willing to hear how they really feel, theyll be much more willing to give their feedback.
Its also important to make it easy for customers to give you instant feedback on a job. A few days after the job, write a sincere email asking them about their experience. In this email, you can include a or send them a feedback survey to prompt a response.
Cost Of Seeding Your Lawn
Lawn seeding is another great way to improve and/or maintain the long-term health and vibrancy of your lawn. It depends on how large of a lawn you have, but the average cost of seeding your lawn is between $850 $1,700. The more area you need seeded the higher the price because it will take longer, and you will need more seed to finish the job.
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Landfill Fees Vs Municipal Pickup
If your lawn crew is going to haul away a significant amount of debris, that may be an extra fee. Some crews will include this in their hourly figure, but others will itemize it as a separate cost.
The debris removal fee will largely depend on the amount of hedge trimmings, but this usually ranges from $25 to $55 per job.
However, if you have a city pickup or if your regular trash pickup allows for yard waste, your hedge trimming crew will often bag the debris and you can eliminate the extra cost.
Landscapers Are Your Friends
When you speak with your lawn mowing company, its important to recognize that they are experts in their fields. They are the doctors to your grass and yard. They know whats best for it. If you dont understand the cost or why you should trim or cut something, feel free to ask. They would be more than happy to help.
Cutting your grass is all about working hard to make your home beautiful. Your HOA will be happy, your curb appeal would look spectacular and most of all, you can have a yard to be proud of.
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What Characteristics Affect Our Mowing Prices
Great question! The size of your lawn is certainly a factor. More specifically, the amount of grass your lawn has. Since we dont mow things like your home, the driveway, or the pool, we subtract out those items and only take into account the amount of grass you have to cut.
Your lawns location compared to us and our current clients. Drive time kills most lawn care companies. We are burning gas and paying employees while they are not generating any revenue for our company. We only mow in parts of Boone and Kenton County, KY to keep our drive time to a minimum. If your lawn happens to be out of the way for us, we will have to account for the additional drive time in your quote.
Fences, corner lots, trampolines, pools, hills, and obstacles raise our pricing. All of these add additional time and/or difficulty to our job. We do our best to accommodate anyone interested in our service, but please understand if your lawn has any of these characteristics it will slightly affect the quote we provide you.
Cost Of Weeding Your Lawn
Wedding your lawn is also very important maintenance. Removing unwanted and unsightly weeds is a sure way to improve the appearance of your lawn. If you have a regular lawn care professional who does your weekly mowing and trimming, you can ask them to get rid of the weeds on their next visit. There are a couple ways to go about weeding your lawn. You can pull them regularly or you can kill them with chemicals designed for the job for a more permanent solution.
The average cost of weeding is about $12 and $40 per hour, depending on which method you choose and how many weeds you have. Using weed killer is usually the more expensive route and cost closer to the $25 – $40 per hour mark since you are paying for labor and the chemicals.
Many weed killers are environmentally safe and pet friendly, but some are not. Be sure to consult a lawn care professional before making decisions on which path to take.
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Start With Family And Friends
Reaching out to family and friends is often the first step for many small business owners, regardless of industry. Since you dont have a reputation as a business owner yet, its easiest to get your first customers from people you already have relationships with.
There are a few other great reasons to start with family and friends:
- Its less work. Your friends and family are more invested in your success than anyone, so it can be a lot easier to sell to a relative or family friend than a total stranger. Reach out to your network, to find people who are enthusiastic to help you promote your business.
- It helps you build confidence. Your personal connections likely wont criticize you as harshly as new customers. Theres also a good chance you can ask them for a positive online review.
- Its good for cash flow. The revenue you make in the first few months is critical to your long-term success. When you desperately need income in your early days, family and friends will be the first people to choose you over a large business.
When its time to start promoting your business, put out announcements on the social media channels where you interact with your family and friendswhether that be LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
You could post a Facebook announcement like this:
Dont be afraid to let everyone know, says Jason Creel. Put it on Facebook, anywhere, but let all your friends and family know youre starting a lawn care business.
Are There Any Obstacles That Could Make It Hard To Mow Your Lawn
Do you have a relatively flat lawn that doesnt have many trees and bushes on it? Its going to be pretty easy for a lawn mowing service to knock your lawn out without charging you an arm and a leg for it.
But if you have a lawn that has hills or if you have a lawn with tons of trees and other obstacles, it can present problems for a lawn mowing service. Theyll have to take their time when mowing your lawn, and youll end up paying the price for it.
You obviously cant do a whole lot about any obstacles situated throughout your lawn. But you can make sure youre aware of them and the role that they might play in the price you pay for lawn mowing.
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I Have A Large Lawn How Can I Keep The Lawn Mowing Costs Down During The Summer Months
Consider turning over some of the lawn to borders or pathways or just losing some for a hard-surfaced area like decking or a patio. You could also allow some of the lawn to run wild and keep it as an area to encourage wildflowers and insects or create a sports and play area for the children which will inevitably suffer but will leave you with a smaller area to keep pristine. Another option is to split the work with a gardener and do some of the cutting work yourself this halfway house can work well as you are more likely to be able to fit around the weather but always coordinate what you are doing with the gardener so that you dont cut across each other.
Establish A Base Rate
There should be base rate that you charge just for the mowing process. These days, lawn care professionals command £22 per yard, and that’s just for mowing. From that point, you would then establish a price for your a la cart services. When establishing pricing points for these services, consider the average amount of time it takes you. So, for example, if you establish that £22 to mow a lawn of a certain size takes an hour, then that is what should be your base hourly rate. This means if it takes you an additional hour to prune the bushes, then add another £22 for the total price of £45. Or if it takes you 30 minutes to prune, then you would add an additional £11.3 to the invoice. If you want to be competitive, you can choose to lower the rate for the à la cart services, but remember that you don’t want to go too low, otherwise you’ll make less per hour than you should.
- There should be base rate that you charge just for the mowing process.
- Or if it takes you 30 minutes to prune, then you would add an additional £11.3 to the invoice.
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