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Stephen, we stick to mowing giving this priority over anything else when the weather is favourable. Then return for the other work. Works for us, can't beat hedge cutting in the rain!
Do you do any weeding and tidying? Do you also return to that in poor weather or as you mow ?
We're nearly 100% commercial, which is a different ball game than domestic, private customers usually expect what ever needs doing to be done on each visit in our experience, otherwise you get why hasn't this been done phone call !!! Generally if something looks bad we'll do it regardless but the majority of the time we leave and do it on a separate day, commercial clients aren't as demanding, sites are larger and weeds etc are not as noticeable. We do explain at the outset with domestics some work is left for other times, guess it's about explaining at the beginning and knowing what's acceptable by each customer.
Hi Stephen
Most of my clients are domestic - They tend to like having a 'set day' so they know when to expect me. ( Useful for those with locked gates ! ) I generally try to keep Fridays as my 'rain off day' - keeping it as near free as possible so I have time for any that were 'rained off' earlier in the week.
Hope that helps !
For the first time this year we seem to have gathered up some customers looking their complete garden maintained every fortnight rather than just our usual strim- mow- blow and onto the next one. With these customers if they had any additional requests we would do them at a different time as we would always explain that additional tasks which we hadn't been asked for prior to arrival would keep us behind for other clients and usually worked well, and similar to Peter said, we would more often than not return on a day where the weather wouldn't be as favorable to cut grass.
this year with the additional customers seeking a full garden maintenance package every two weeks instead of a grass cut, I think I will dedicate a particular day in the fortnightly cycle to them. To be honest I think they will get a better service and I won't be as scunderd looking at my watch thinking about how many more lawns I have left to do that day. I think even if I did allow extra time I would still be in the frantic mindset of getting the grass cut and out of the asap.
returning to do other jobs like you suggested has always worked for us but it probably depends on your client. To some they are the be all and end all and you are only the help, and so you should be at their beckon call for as long as require you. In my opinion if they want that level of service the should be paying you as an employee and giving you the associated benefits so we have always tried to dodge them
I've always had quite a lot who require bed and shrub maintenance aswel as lawns
If I could just cut lawns and do hedges I would..
I'm the same , If I'm weeding on a belting day I'm constantly thinking I could be mowing others lawns.
Depends on customer expectations if it's lawns they expect the lawns cutting .
General maintenance I do as much work as possible in the allocated time slot .large gardens are usually work in progress on a regular basis unless they want to employ me full time it gets done in stages .
Many gardens the lawn gets cut by the customer or by a lawn cutting business leaving me free to focus on everything else .
Had a curved ball last week Two of us booked in to do weeding and tidy up .
Customer moved the goal posts and asked us to prune apple trees , roses and shrubs in the time we had allocated for weeding , there was not enough time to complete the work , resulted in minor injury rushing and went without lunch break , not a great start but we went about the work cheerfully , what else can you do ?
Don't feel like going back though .
Have a good season Stephen
I've also had customers where I've turned up to mow a lawn and the customer has said I've mowed it , can you do the hedges instead...
Well of course I can but it's a different kettle of fish , I wouldn't pay a jeweller for silver and then ask for gold for the same price.
At a regulars last week, I arrived to a large windblown birch hung up over a river, diced and stacked that, then on to weeding, then border clearance and shrub renovation, then finished the day with the 2 mature apple trees which we were actually meant to be doing that day!
There were a few moments of questioning myself to say the least, especially as when we'd done all that by 3.30, we then proceeded to discuss the next visits schedule rather than a pat on the back, finish early that's fine, thank you.!
We find that there is far greater demand for full garden maintenance than just mowing only, and with full maintenance you can schedule jobs for the whole year rather than just 8 months of the year.
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