Fortnightly in summer, monthly in winter: seasonal schedules per property

A seasonal garden maintenance schedule visits fortnightly through the growing season, roughly April to October, and monthly through winter, and it is set per property rather than for the whole round. A shady lawn on clay and a south-facing plot with a lot of bedding do not need the same pattern, and a diary that treats them the same either over-visits one or neglects the other.

This post sets out a sensible default pattern, how to adjust it per garden, how the price follows the pattern, and how the diary changes gear at the change of season without anyone re-booking two hundred visits.

Treat that as a starting point, not a rule. The RHS publishes month-by-month guidance on what a garden needs, and the visits should follow the jobs, not the calendar. The point is that the pattern changes, and that your diary should change with it.

The temptation is to run the whole round on one cadence because it is easier to plan. It is also where the money leaks. A small courtyard with gravel and pots needs a monthly visit all year and a fortnightly one is a waste of a slot. A big lawn with fast growth needs weekly in May and you will be blamed for the hay if you turn up fortnightly. Set each garden's pattern on its own record and let the diary do the planning.

In the app each property carries its own frequency by season, its price and its task list, and the recurring visits are generated from that. Change the pattern once on the record and every future visit for that garden moves; nothing else on the round is touched. The gardening trade page shows how a round looks with mixed cadences.

If you charge per visit, a seasonal pattern changes the customer's bill through the year on its own: more visits in June, fewer in January. If you charge monthly, the fee should be the annual number of visits multiplied by the visit price, divided by twelve, and the contract should say what that pattern is so the quiet months are not a surprise. Either way, the pattern and the price are one decision, and they should be made together when you set up the property. Every plan on the pricing page includes the round and per-visit invoicing; Premium adds Direct Debit for a monthly fee. The contract structure that carries both is in garden maintenance contracts that stick.

The awkward fortnight is the switch: the week in March when half the round goes fortnightly and the week in October when it goes back. Do it garden by garden as you visit, not all on one day. Each visit in March is a chance to look at the growth and decide whether this one goes to fortnightly now or next time, and the record per visit means the next due date moves from the day you decide.

The diary shows the round by day, week and month, colour-coded, so you can see the coming weeks fill up as gardens switch and even out the load by nudging a few. The plan for each day is then ordered nearest-first from the properties actually due, which matters more in summer when the days are long and full. Weather is on the same screen; a wet week in April shifts the whole round in the same way as a window cleaner's, which is covered in how a round survives a wet week.

A monthly winter visit is not a formality. It is the visit that keeps the customer's garden looking cared for when the neighbours' are not, which is when the next customer on the street notices. Leaf clearing, winter pruning, gutters, a tidy of the beds and a check of the fences and the shed. Photograph it and send the photos with the invoice, because in January the customer has not looked out of the window; that habit is the subject of before-and-after photos that sell the next visit.

Winter is also when you quote the spring extras: the hedge reduction, the new border, the turf. Those go on the quotes board and become jobs in March, when the diary has room for them before the fortnightly pattern fills it. If you also do landscaping, fencing or a second trade, the same customer list and diary carry it; see running two trades on one account and the platform overview.