Devon · EX1-EX6
Strimming and overgrowth clearance in Exeter
Strimming and overgrowth clearance across Exeter, from long Victorian back gardens to new estate plots, where access usually costs more time than the cutting.
City gardens are small, and that is not the same as quick
The plots in Exeter's older quarters are long, narrow and walled or fenced on both sides, which is a pleasant thing to own and an awkward thing to clear. Everything cut has to come back out the way it went in, and on a terrace that usually means a side alley barely wide enough for a wheelbarrow, or straight through the house, which nobody wants.
So the estimate on a city job is rarely about the square metres. Fifty metres of growth in an open garden with a gate onto a lane is an hour. The same fifty metres behind a mid terrace with a narrow passage and a parking bay two streets away can be double that, because the carrying is the job.
Damp air, a long season and growth that does not stop
Exeter sits on the tidal head of the Exe with the ground falling away east towards the Clyst and rising west towards Haldon, and the valley holds damp air. Rainfall is above the England average and north facing ground dries slowly, which is why a garden here grows for longer either side of summer than the same garden would forty miles inland.
In practice that means a plot left from March is knee high by June and over waist height by the end of July, and it means late season cutting is worth planning for. A boundary taken back in September holds its shape through the winter and gives you a much easier start in spring.
Student lets, rentals and the August turnover
A good share of the housing near the university and through the older central streets changes hands every summer, and the garden is usually the last thing anybody looks at. Agents and landlords tend to want the same thing: the plot back to ground level, the boundaries visible and photographs to put on file before the next tenancy starts.
That work is straightforward and it books well by the half day, because it is often two or three properties in the same postcode on the same morning. Everything cut goes away on the trailer under the waste carrier registration rather than being left in a heap for the next person to deal with.
Where the trailer goes
The one thing worth saying before a city booking is where a pickup and trailer can sit. Residents parking, a narrow street, a controlled bay or a shared drive all change how the day runs, and it is much easier to sort out beforehand than at eight in the morning with a machine in the back.
Commercial ground gets the same question. Yards and car parks around Marsh Barton and the trading estates are usually easy, and the awkward ones are the small city sites where the only frontage is on a bus route.
Behind the rate
What you are paying for in Exeter
Registered waste carrier
Hembury Contracting holds waste carrier registration CBDU641882, so the cut material can leave your property legally rather than being someone else's problem. Tipping is charged on at cost.
Public liability insurance
Cover is in place for the work. Brush cutters throw stones, and anyone taking one near your glass, your car or your neighbour's fence should be able to say what happens if one goes the wrong way.
Petrol brush cutters, not a domestic strimmer
Harness mounted machines with a metal blade for woody bramble and bracken and a nylon head for grass and edges. A hired garden strimmer will bog down in the first hour of anything that has stood for a season.
One rate, published
£60 an hour including VAT, two hour minimum. There is no free site visit to sit through, no per job quote to wait for and nothing to negotiate. What it costs depends on how long it takes.
Nearby
Also covered around Exeter
- HeavitreeOvergrown garden clearance in Heavitree, where dense terraces either side of Fore Street leave long back plots reachable only from a rear lane or the house.
- St ThomasStrimming and clearance in St Thomas, where flood plain soil west of the Exe grows harder and heavier than the drier ground on the hills either side.
- AlphingtonOvergrowth clearance in Alphington, where an old village core and the estates around it sit on the flat, damp ground of the Alphin Brook beside Marsh Barton.
- PinhoeStrimming and clearance in Pinhoe, from the old village core to the new estates on the city's eastern edge, where many gardens sit on levelled builders' subsoil.
- IdeOvergrowth clearance in Ide, a conservation village in a valley west of Exeter, where cottage gardens, old orchards and thatch all change how a job is worked.
- TopshamStrimming and clearance in Topsham, where long walled gardens behind the Strand, salt marsh edges and a narrow historic street each set their own pace on a clearance job.
- BroadclystOvergrowth clearance in Broadclyst, where estate cottages, cob and thatch, and the wet Clyst meadow ground mean growth starts early in the year and keeps going.
- CranbrookStrimming and clearance in Cranbrook, a town built entirely this century, where gardens on levelled subsoil behave nothing like an established Devon plot.
- ExmouthOvergrowth clearance in Exmouth, from sandy suburban plots and shared flat gardens to gorse and bramble on the slopes behind the town, with the sea wind shaping it.
- CreditonStrimming and clearance in Crediton, where long burgage plots behind the high street and deep red Creedy valley soil both grow hard and grow early in the year.
- CullomptonOvergrowth clearance in Cullompton, where the flat Culm valley floor, late estate housing and the paddocks around the town all sit on ground that holds water.
- Newton AbbotOvergrowth clearance in Newton Abbot, where flat clay floodplain ground, long runs of railway era terraces and commercial yard edges make up most of the work.
See the hourly rate
Book a clearance in Exeter
Send a EX1-EX6 postcode, a rough size and a couple of photographs. Sam Hembury will come back with an estimate in hours and the next dates that suit the weather.