Fantastic Services Gardening Review
An honest look at Fantastic Services gardening, what they offer, what they charge, and how they compare to a local SE London specialist.
An honest look at Fantastic Services gardening, what they offer, what they charge, and how they compare to a local SE London specialist.
Last updated: May 2026
Fantastic Services is one of the most searched names in London home services. They cover everything from cleaning and pest control to garden maintenance, and their marketing is hard to miss. If you are looking for a gardener in South East London, you have probably seen them come up. But "biggest" and "best for your garden" are not the same thing. This review looks at what Fantastic Services actually offers for gardening, what it costs, and where a local specialist might be a better fit.
We cover their pricing model, how the booking process works in practice, who turns up on the day, their environmental approach, and what you get after a visit. We then compare that directly against Urban Bloom Gardening so you can make an informed decision for your garden.
Fantastic Services vs Urban Bloom Gardening on the things that matter
| Feature | Fantastic Services | Urban Bloom Gardening |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing Model | Hourly (£45–55/hr in London). Scarification, overseeding, and topdressing are separate add-on services. | ✓ Fixed price. £165 for 3 hrs maintenance, £299 for 4 hrs clearance, £249+ for lawn care. No hidden extras. |
| Booking Process | ✗ Requires signup and questionnaire before you can see pricing or availability. | ✓ Genuine instant online booking. Book in 60 seconds, no account needed. |
| Who Does the Work | ✗ Two-person teams from the platform network. Not named gardeners. Teams may differ each visit. | ✓ Josh Hellicar every visit. Same named gardener, same approach, building knowledge of your garden over time. |
| Eco Credentials | ✗ Minimal. General mention of eco-friendly products where suitable. | ✓ Award-winning eco approach. Mainly battery powered tools, no chemicals, wildlife habitats built from garden waste. |
| What's Included | Core maintenance visit. Specialist lawn treatments (scarification, overseeding, topdressing) cost extra. | ✓ WhatsApp planning before every visit. Before and after photos on the day. Handwritten next-session plan left with you. |
| After the Visit | Standard completion. No follow-up plan included. | ✓ Handwritten plan for the next session so your garden keeps improving visit by visit. |
| Coverage | ✓ All of London. Broad availability across zones. | 18 areas across South East London. Specialist coverage of SE postcodes. |
Fantastic Services charges by the hour for garden maintenance in London. The headline rate sits in the £45 to £55 per hour range, but you will not see an actual figure until you have created an account and worked through their booking questionnaire. For most people searching "fantastic services gardening cost", that is a frustrating discovery.
The hourly model also means the final cost depends on how long the job takes. For a three-hour visit, you are looking at £135 to £165 before any additional charges. Specialist lawn treatments such as scarification, overseeding, and topdressing are priced as separate services rather than being bundled into a maintenance visit.
Urban Bloom Gardening publishes fixed prices on the website: £165 for a three-hour garden maintenance session, £299 for a four-hour garden clearance, and £249 or more for lawn care and restoration. You know what you will pay before you book. No questionnaire required.
The Fantastic Services booking flow requires you to create an account, enter your postcode, and complete a questionnaire about your garden before you can see availability or confirm a booking. This is not a fast process. For many people looking for a quick gardener booking, hitting an account creation wall is a reason to look elsewhere.
This is not a criticism unique to Fantastic Services. Most gardening services in London, local or national, ask you to call, email, or fill in a contact form. But Fantastic Services do present themselves as a tech-first booking platform, so the multi-step process is worth flagging.
Urban Bloom Gardening offers genuine instant online booking. You open the booking page, see real-time calendar availability, pick a slot, and confirm. No account. No questionnaire. No waiting for a callback. The whole process takes under a minute.
Fantastic Services operates as a platform. When you book, you are booked into an available slot with a team from their network. The teams consist of two people. You are not shown who those people are before the visit, and there is no guarantee of the same team returning for your next booking. This works fine for a one-off tidy or clearance where consistency does not matter.
For regular garden maintenance, continuity matters more. A gardener who visits your garden repeatedly builds up knowledge: which plants are about to flower, where the drainage problem recurs, which border gets scorched in dry spells. Passing that knowledge between different team members every visit is difficult.
Urban Bloom Gardening is run by Josh Hellicar. Josh is the person who comes to your garden every visit. He plans each session with you on WhatsApp beforehand, takes before and after photos on the day, and leaves a handwritten plan for the next session. Your garden builds a history with the same person rather than starting fresh each time.
Fantastic Services mentions using eco-friendly products "where suitable" on their website. There are no specific commitments around chemical use, power tool emissions, or wildlife-friendly practices. For many customers this will not be a deciding factor. For those who care about what goes into their soil and what effect their gardener has on local wildlife, the vagueness is worth noting.
Urban Bloom Gardening has a clear and specific environmental approach. Josh mainly uses battery powered tools, which produce no exhaust emissions and significantly less noise than petrol alternatives. No chemicals are ever used in the garden. Garden waste is used where possible to build wildlife habitats: log piles, leaf mould bays, and native plant areas that support bees, birds, and hedgehogs. This approach has been independently recognised as award-winning.
Fantastic Services covers a wide range of home services beyond gardening, which is part of their appeal. For gardening, they offer maintenance, clearance, lawn care, hedge trimming, and landscaping. The teams are trained to carry out these tasks to a consistent standard across their network.
What a platform model struggles to deliver is deep horticultural knowledge applied to your specific garden. Knowing when to prune a climbing rose versus a shrub rose, which weeds are worth composting and which should go to the tip, how to read a plant's response to soil conditions, or how to design a border that will flower from March to October. These are skills that come from horticultural training and years of hands-on practice, not a standardised platform checklist.
Josh brings real horticultural knowledge to every visit and applies it specifically to your garden. Before each session he reviews your WhatsApp notes from previous visits so nothing is forgotten. After each session he writes up what was done and what to focus on next time.
Fantastic Services is a legitimate, well-established option and there are real situations where they are the right choice. Be honest about your priorities before dismissing them.
If one or more of those describes you, Fantastic Services is worth considering. Visit their South East London gardening page and go through their booking flow to get an actual price for your garden.
Urban Bloom Gardening is the right fit if any of the following matter to you.
If that sounds like what you are looking for, you can book online now in under 60 seconds. Fixed pricing, real-time availability, instant confirmation.
Fantastic Services is a legitimate national platform covering all of London. They are a reasonable option for one-off tasks if you need broad availability and are happy to sign up for an account before booking. For regular garden maintenance in South East London, a local specialist gardener will likely offer more consistency, horticultural knowledge, and a named person every visit.
Fantastic Services charges an hourly rate for gardening in London, typically in the range of £45 to £55 per hour. Pricing is shown after you create an account and complete their booking questionnaire. Additional services such as scarification, overseeding, or topdressing are priced separately and are not included in the standard maintenance visit rate.
Fantastic Services is a marketplace platform that sends available two-person teams from their network. You will not necessarily get the same gardeners each visit, and the teams are not named on booking. A local independent gardener like Urban Bloom Gardening sends the same named person every visit, brings specialist horticultural knowledge, and provides a handwritten plan for each session. The tradeoff is that platforms offer broader London coverage while local gardeners offer more consistency and depth.
Yes, Fantastic Services offers regular maintenance visits. Because they work as a platform with a pool of teams, you may not get the same gardeners each time. If consistency of person and approach matters to you for regular work, a named local gardener is a better fit. You can see pricing and availability from both and compare before committing.
Yes. Urban Bloom Gardening covers 18 areas across South East London with fixed pricing, instant online booking, and the same named gardener every visit. Other local alternatives include Willow Alexander Gardeners (certified carbon neutral, premium service), Matt Ayres Gardening (strict organic approach, solo gardener), and Urban Gardeners (established firm for larger landscaping work). See our Best Gardeners in South East London guide for a full comparison by area.
Fixed pricing, instant confirmation, the same named gardener every visit. Book in 60 seconds.