Strimming and overgrowth clearance in Chudleigh

The town sits under the Haldon ridge with steep wooded combes cutting through it, and a great many gardens spend most of the day in shade. Grass gives up in those conditions and the things that take its place are the ones nobody wants: ivy running out across the ground, laurel spreading where it was never planted, and bramble taking the north side of every boundary.

That changes the job from strimming to brush cutting. Ivy and laurel are woody and springy, they wrap a nylon head instantly, and they come out with a blade and a fair bit of pulling by hand.

Chudleigh is built on limestone that outcrops as rock along the southern edge of the town, and the soil over it is thin in places and deep in the combe bottoms. Rock close to the surface is worth flagging, because a metal blade meeting stone is hard on the machine and hard on whatever is nearby.

The steep sides above the town carry the larger houses with long gardens, and those plots are as much slope work as garden work: cut down the fall, drag the material to a level, then load or stack it.

The centre was largely rebuilt after the fire of 1807, and there are cob and thatch survivors on the lanes around it. Old boundary walls are everywhere, many of them dry laid, and they shed material if a blade catches them.

So the working rule near any old wall is the nylon head and a hand pull, and the blade stays for open ground. It costs a few minutes and saves a repair.

Sheltered from the worst of the coastal wind by Haldon, the town is still consistently wet, and the shaded combes hold damp all year. Ground here rarely dries out properly, which is why growth runs away quickly and why a wet week can push a booking.

Access is generally good on the higher estates and less so on the old lanes, where parking is limited and a trailer needs somewhere agreed in advance.

Ugbrooke and its park sit beside the town and Haldon Forest rises above it, so there is a lot of woodland and parkland edge on this ground. What comes off it is bramble, bracken and self set sycamore and ash seedlings pushing into gardens and paddocks.

Seedling regrowth is worth catching early. At wrist thickness it is still brush cutter work; left another two years it becomes a chainsaw job and a different trade.

On the steep plots above the town it is worth saying whether there is a path down to the road or only steps, because everything cut has to travel that route and on a long garden it travels it several times.