How to hire a gardener: visiting, part-time or on payroll, what to ask, what to agree, and what a fair quote looks like

The difference between a good gardener and a bad one is not price. It is whether the garden looks better in a year than it does today. Here is how to tell before the first visit, and how to keep the arrangement honest without being difficult.

First decide which of the three you need

A visiting gardener. One-off or monthly. ₹400 a visit for a small garden or terrace, ₹900 for a large one, or ₹1,500 a month for four visits and ₹5,000 for eight. Right for almost every flat, terrace and small house garden. The gardener brings hand tools; you provide water, pots and plants.

A part-time gardener on payroll. Two hours every morning, six days a week, ₹5,000 a month. Right for a villa with a lawn, beds and trees, where daily watering and sweeping is the real work. Tools and mower are yours.

A full-time gardener. ₹13,000 a month, for a large compound, a farmhouse, or a housing society with lawns and hedges. A day's labour at ₹550 is for one-off heavy work.

The arithmetic turns over at about eight visits a month: beyond that, payroll is cheaper and the person learns the garden. Below it, visits are cheaper and you are not managing an employee.

On the phone: five questions that sort the professionals

1. "What do you do in a visit?" You want a list: deadheading, light pruning, weeding with roots, loosening the top of each pot, checking for pests, sweeping, and a note of what to buy. "Watering and cleaning" is a helper, not a gardener.
2. "Which grass would you put in my front lawn?" The answer should depend on sun and traffic: Mexican or Korean carpet grass for a small shaded ornamental patch, Bermuda or Selection 1 for sun and children. One answer for every lawn is a bad sign.
3. "What goes into your potting mix?" You want soil, compost or vermicompost, and cocopeat, roughly equal, with sand for drainage. "Garden soil and manure" means pots that will pack hard by the second monsoon.
4. "How do you price a setup?" Per square foot of labour, with materials listed separately and bought on a nursery bill. A single round number for "a terrace garden" has not been counted. The TheHire estimator breaks it down this way, at ₹70 per sq ft for a terrace and ₹45 per sq ft for beds, and a professional will recognise the list.
5. "Can I speak to someone whose garden you maintain?" A gardener with a year of monthly plans has three names ready.

At the first visit: what to look for

• They look up before they look down: at the sun, the walls, the trees that shade the beds. A gardener who starts planting without checking the light will plant the wrong things.
• They put a finger in the pots before deciding anything about watering.
• They pull weeds with the root, not the top.
• Their secateurs are bypass and clean. Cuts on your plants are angled and just above a node.
• They ask about the terrace's waterproofing and the water point before quoting a terrace setup.
• They tell you what not to buy. A gardener who agrees to every plant on your list is selling, not advising.

Red flags

• Every plant dies "because of the weather". Weather is the same for the neighbour's garden.
• Fresh dung manure carried in sacks. It burns roots and seeds the beds with weeds. Compost should be old, cool and crumbly.
• Spraying first. A gardener who reaches for a chemical spray at the first aphid rather than a hose and neem has one tool.
• No bill from the nursery, or a bill with no quantities. Plants and soil are where padding happens.
• A terrace setup quoted without a word about drainage or load. Cement pots on a slab and bags with no drainage layer are the cause of the damp ceiling six months later.
• Pruning a tree over head height from a ladder with a hand saw. Over 15 ft is a different trade, with ropes, and in most cities needs a permit.

What a fair quote looks like

For a monthly plan: the number of visits, the days, roughly how long each takes, what is included, and what is extra. Pest spray at ₹600, manuring at ₹700, and re-potting at ₹60 a pot are normal extras; weeding and deadheading are not.

For a setup: area in square feet, the labour rate per square foot, a materials list with quantities and the nursery's prices, who buys, and what happens if a plant dies in the first month. For a lawn, the turf variety named, the bed depth, and the daily watering you must do for three weeks written down, because the guarantee depends on it. Labour is ₹25 per sq ft and turf ₹12–₹30 per sq ft.

For payroll: monthly pay, hours, days off, the bonus, the notice period, and whose tools. The same norms as any household staff apply: a weekly day off, a month's pay as Diwali or Pongal bonus, a month's notice either way, and a small raise each year.

What to agree before work starts

1. The scope, as a list. For a visit: what gets done. For a setup: the area, the plant list, the materials.
2. Who buys what, and that bills come to you. Or that you buy from the gardener's list.
3. Watering between visits. Who does it, or that a drip line at ₹20 per sq ft goes in first.
4. Waste. Where cuttings and old soil go. A clearing with removal is ₹1,200; a monthly visit leaves a bag by the gate unless agreed otherwise.
5. Access. The gate, the terrace key, the tap, and whether the gardener can come when nobody is home. Most monthly plans only work if they can.
6. A trial month on any monthly or payroll arrangement, with a walk around together at the end of it.

After the work

Walk the garden with the gardener at the end of a setup and a month into a plan. Look for cut stems healing clean, no standing water, pots on feet, and the plants in the light they need. Ask what they would change. The ones worth keeping have an answer.

Every gardener on TheHire is ID and phone verified, and reviews after each job are public, which covers the part you cannot check at the gate. Post the request with photos of the garden at 9 am and 3 pm; the light in the pictures tells a good gardener most of what they need to quote.

When you need more than a gardener

A terrace needs a mason for waterproofing before the garden, and a plumber for a tap. Trees over 15 ft, or near wires, need a tree contractor and often a municipal permit. Termites in the garden wood or a bed full of white grubs is the pest-control trade, not the gardener's spray. A full landscape with levels, paving and lighting starts with a design at ₹5,000 and brings in a mason for the pathway at ₹60 per sq ft of labour; the gardener plants what the plan says.