The Datum Report

Occupation 5113 · Skilled trades occupations

Gardeners and landscape gardeners

Half of full-time gardeners and landscape gardeners in the UK earn more than £28,539 a year, and half earn less.

Gardeners and landscape gardeners cultivate flowers, trees, shrubs and other plants in public and private gardens, construct features to improve the appearance of existing terrain, and cut and lay turf.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements. NVQs/SVQs in Horticulture are available at levels 1, 2 and 3. Relevant apprenticeships and professional qualifications are also available.

What the work involves

• levels ground and installs drainage system as required
• prepares soil and plants and transplants, prunes, weeds and otherwise tends plant life
• protects plants from pests and diseases
• cuts and lays turf using hand and machine tools and repairs damaged turf
• prepares or interprets garden design plans
• moves soil to alter surface contour of land using mechanical equipment and constructs paths, rockeries, ponds and other features
• performs general garden maintenance

Also called

Garden designer · Gardener · Gardener-handyman · Landscape gardener

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for gardeners and landscape gardeners, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 10 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Agricultural and fishing trades n.e.c. · Farmers · Groundsmen and greenkeepers · Horticultural trades