Trade
Garden maintenance
Four fixed rounds a year, with what happens in each of them written down.
A garden that is not kept up is back where it started within two summers, which is why maintenance here is not a by-product of building one but its own arrangement with its own schedule. Four rounds a year: early March cutting back and opening the soil, late May the first prune and the weeds that come with it, late August the second prune, and November for leaves and putting the garden to bed.
What happens in each round and what it costs is fixed in advance. You do not get an open hourly account but an annual figure covering the four visits, and if something falls outside it you hear before it happens. For a garden we built, the first round doubles as the check on what has taken.
We do not take on gardens we visit once a year. That is not obstinacy: one visit a year means repairing rather than maintaining, and you end up paying more while the garden never looks right. If four rounds cannot be justified, a different garden layout is usually the better answer, and we are happy to price that out instead.
Closed over at most
50%
We will not build a garden that is more than half hard surface. On this ground the water has to go somewhere.
Lead time
3 to 6
Working days for a garden up to a hundred square metres, spread over two weeks.
We come back within
12mo
Anything we plant that fails to take, we replace within a year at no cost.
What you can do between rounds
A weed you can pull out with two fingers is not yet work; the same weed needing a trowel is. Ten minutes a week holds the months in between.
What happens in each round
March cutting back and opening the soil, late May pruning and removing self-seeded growth, late August the second prune, November leaves and winter preparation. On paper, with dates.
What handover means
A short note after each round with what was done and what stood out. A garden changes slowly, and what was obvious in March is forgotten by November.
First whether it can be done, then what it costs
Photograph the spot where the water stands. That answers half the question on its own.
The background, if you want to read further
Published Dutch price guides give maintenance costs in two ways, and the two contradict each other. Homedeal quotes an annual figure of 700 to 1,100 euro for an average garden, and separately a per-square-metre scale: 2 to 4 euro a year for light maintenance, 4 to 7 for normal and 7 to 12 for intensive. For an Amsterdam back garden of sixty square metres that scale gives 120 to 720 euro a year, so the annual average from the same source clearly refers to a considerably larger garden.
We therefore price by the square metre rather than by an average annual figure, because a national average says nothing about a garden four metres by six in het Blauwe Zand. What moves the price within the band is the ratio of border to lawn: lawn costs time in summer, a border costs time in spring and autumn, and a garden with a lot of hedge sits at the top because cutting cannot be done faster.
What is different about maintenance in Noord is the amount of self-seeding from the surroundings. In the neighbourhoods bordering Het Twiske or the peat meadow country, birch, willow and maple seed themselves into any border left alone for a season, and a sapling that has stood a year no longer comes out by hand. The late-May round is aimed specifically at that.
Questions about garden maintenance
What does garden maintenance cost per year?
We charge 4 to 9 euro per square metre per year including Dutch VAT (btw) for four fixed rounds, green waste removal included. Where you sit in that band depends on the ratio of border, lawn and hedge. You get an annual figure rather than an open hourly arrangement.
Can I book a single visit instead?
For a garden that has run wild, yes, as a first visit to get back to zero. After that, no: at one round a year you are repairing each time rather than maintaining, which costs more overall while the garden never looks right. We would rather say that beforehand than after a year.
What happens to the green waste?
It goes with us and is disposed of; it is in the annual figure. Leaves are the exception worth discussing: in a corner where it is not in the way, a leaf heap is the cheapest soil improver in existence. We would rather build you one than cart the leaves off.
Do you work in shared gardens and courtyards?
Yes, and in the garden villages that happens regularly. What we ask for is one point of contact and an agreement about who decides, because in a courtyard with eight opinions every pruning round becomes a meeting. With one contact and a schedule on paper it goes well.
Torn between two solutions
Put both to us. We will say which of the two lasts longer on this ground, and why.
The neighbourhoods where we do this
What this trade means in practice differs per neighbourhood. The page for your own one says what applies where you live.
What else people call us for
Your request
Six fields and a photo. With the area and the type of garden we can name a band before coming out; without those two, any answer is a guess.
Start with a photo
One photo from the back door showing the whole garden almost always saves a trip. Send two if you like: one of the whole and one of the spot where it goes wrong.