News from the gardening world
But while boosting house prices, we’d rather create them ourselves
Well-kept gardens can boost house prices by around £2,000, new research has shown. But while nice gardens are a benefit, British householders are only prepared to spend just £473 a year, or £9 a week, on maintaining their plots, while a quarter say they only spent between £1 and £100 on their garden last year.
The survey by AXA Insurance found Londoners were, unsurprisingly, the biggest spenders, at £600 per year, although Scotland and the North East were close behind with £515 and £556 respectively. Wales and the South West came last, at around £400.
Householders are also loathe to pay for work to be done professionally, significantly under-estimating the costs involved. For instance, respondents would only pay £10 an hour for a gardener, which is half the recommended fee for a qualified gardener with their own equipment.
For larger jobs many people would consider calling in a professional, but most would only want to part with £500 per task. Most would only want to spend £378 for building a terrace, £290 for building a pond and just £190 for laying turf. Designing a garden was thought to be £390, although the true cost is actually around four times that by current market standards.
The survey shows that many homeowners would like to learn more construction skills, with 41 per cent yearning to know how to design a new garden, 37 per cent building a garden wall and 36 per cent installing a water feature.
● How much do you spend on your garden each year? Have you ever paid for professional gardening or landscaping services. If so how did you fare? We’d love to know. You can find all our contact details on page 55, so get in touch.