How much would you pay for a gardening day school/course?

[Chrissyteacup]

For £185 I’d want them to throw in the fruit trees of your choice... and an overnight stay with breakfast too!!

[mothhawk]

Well, for starters, I had to look up who Mark Diacono was as I've never heard of him. Seems a bit of a "Jack of all trades". If I was going to shell out £185 to learn specifically about how to choose, plant, maintain and enjoy an orchard, I'd want to be learning from a master orchard fruit grower, not a "writer, grower, photographer and cook", as he styles himself on his web page.

I've a suspicion there'll be an awful lot of apple recipes, and a basic tree planting guide. But hey, I could be wrong. Maybe he has an encyclopedic knowledge of apple trees. None of the courses he runs seems to include orchard growing.

[Nicos]

You can YouTube/gooogle most of the information you would get on such a short course for free....sounds more like paying to be able to say you've spent the day with someone famous.

Doesn't rock my boat I'm afraid

[Jay-ell]

When I lived in Walthamstow Organic Lea ran City and Guild certified courses starting off at about £150 for the level 1 courses which lasted 10 weeks about 4 hours a week (iifc).

Level 2 would be about £400-£500 for 30 weeks.


I once nearly signed up to a residential course to learn to make my own leather shoes - but in the end it was a load of cobblers.

[Bren In Pots]

I make that 3hrs 25 mins of tuition and 2 hrs 25 of "food".

It sounds more like a social day out than a learning session. I'll stick with the vine thanks

[Jay-ell]

Well, for starters, I had to look up who Mark Diacono was as I've never heard of him.

Wasn't he a guitarist on one of the '80 hair metal bands?

[Bill Door]

Well I think that would be £370 for the day, can't forget significant other. Somebody has to drive home after all that cider!

Still might be lucky and get VC extolling the virtues of "planting 10 seeds a week for a whole year"!! Got to think of the positives you know.

Bill

[Snoop Puss]

Massively profitable. How many people on the course, each paying that?

I once signed up for a Tai Chi course. Probably about 40 people in the class, each paying 25 euros per session.

[veggiechicken]

Funny you should say that, Bill, as, in my head, I imagined running my own course, in my garden, eating my home grown produce for lunch, and wondered how much I could charge for it - and how much people would be prepared to pay to listen to me clucking away
It would be summat like this :-

Morning session - the Principles of Roots, Shoots, Fruits and Leaves sowing regimes and its benefits
Refreshments - an apple and a cuppa tea made from freshly plucked herbs.
Late morning - Alphabetical polycultures and the advantages of living without labels.

A sumptuous 2 course lunch of Courgettes in many guises followed by another apple.

Afternoon session. How to break the garden rules - a personal account of winging it as a chicken.

FAQ - 1 minute.

Afterwards, there will be an opportunity to take a tour of the garden, meet the chickens and take home your very own seed collection selected for you personally. (all the old stuff I'll never grow).

Waddya reckon? £2.50.

And, what course could you run?

[bikermike]

Interesting that people think it's "inflated"

factor in
prep time, assistants time, tax etc (an employee's salary is c2/3-3/4 of their cost - compulsory pension etc as well), insurance, materials, an allocation towards rent. Depends how many people.

If you say a salary of £30k as a salary for non-base-level course provider, and they get say half their income from the courses, you need to make £15k for just that person. If they did that every weekend of the year that's £288/course straight up (0r c.£384 if you include other employee costs)

There are some serious assumptions in that number.
National minimum wage for an over-25 is £7.80/hour. So for a 4 hour course (assume the same amount of setting up and clearing away, that's 8 hours which is £62.40 (£83.20).
Someone has to cook the lunch (or it's got to be bought in), answer the phones, do the bookings, make sure everything is ready beforehand - call that same again


Assume 10 people on a course and you have wage costs of £550 to cover, so that's £55/head, before materials, profit (you do need to make a profit to stay in business), contingency, tax

[veggiechicken]

I look at prices differently to you. My question is "How long does it take me to "earn" £185 and what else could I buy with that money.
For example, £185 is more than a week's state pension, so is it value for money to spend a week's pension on listening to someone talking for 3 hours and eating a 2 course lunch. That's ignoring my travelling costs to reach the venue.
Simply, I can't afford it!

[bikermike]

That's my point though, what one person can afford isn't the same as what something costs, just because it costs more than you are willing to pay for it doesn't mean it's over-priced.

If someone selling something isn't making a living wage out of it then it's not sustainable unless someone else is picking up the tab. Craft fairs are notorious for that - good luck to anyone trying to make money out of it as bankers' wives are doing it for fun and don't need to make a living. Which is effectively pricing people out of a job.

Also, if you have a choice of two courses, one at £50 and one at £150, are you getting better value of out the £50? not if it's rushed, over-crowded and run by a non-expert.


FTAOD, I don't have a vested interest in the gardening course or craft-fair industries....

[veggiechicken]

To put the record straight, I used the word "inflated" as that is my opinion of the price, however, nobody thus far, has said they would pay £185 for the day, so I don't think I'm alone in my opinion.

£185 is a drop in the ocean for some, maybe the cost of a meal out or a fraction of the cost of some new gadget - and good luck to them, I don't begrudge it to them or to the organisers of the event. They know that people will pay it and that's what matters to them.

I have a couple of Mark Diacono's books and Sarah Ravens. I could buy them all for £185 and read them at home at my leisure - or I could have a 3 hours of chat. No need to guess which one I think is better value.

[bikermike]

isn't "expensive" a better word?
My point is that it's not "inflated" in the sense of costing more than it should.

There's nothing wrong with not being willing to pay a more than a set figure for something, but to suggest that that makes the figure asked in some way not related to the cost isn't necessarily correct.

[Jungle Jane]

I wouldn’t pay £185,some people don’t know the value of money,they have so much so they just pay it & put it down as government expenses etc.