Strimming and overgrowth clearance in Exmouth

Much of Exmouth sits on light, free draining ground, and that changes the job. Grass on sandy soil goes over and browns off in a dry summer rather than standing thick, but the plants that thrive on it come back harder: bramble, gorse on the rougher edges, and coarse tussock grass that a nylon head will not touch.

That means a plot here can look manageable in August and still need a metal blade, because what is standing is woody rather than lush. It also means the ground is workable sooner after rain than the heavy clay inland, which makes Exmouth a sensible booking in a wet week.

The town has a great many Regency and Victorian villas divided into flats, and a shared garden that belongs to everybody tends to be maintained by nobody. Those jobs usually come in from a managing agent or one fed up leaseholder, and they are straightforward: cut the whole thing back to ground level, clear the boundaries, take it away.

Holiday lets and second homes create the same pattern for a different reason. A garden nobody sees between October and Easter is over waist height by the time the season starts, and a single spring clearance is often the whole of what is needed for the year.

Ground rising towards Orcombe Point and the cliffs behind the seafront carries gorse, bramble and rough grass, and properties with a boundary onto it inherit whatever is coming over the fence. That is proper brush cutter work rather than strimming, cut with a blade and dragged clear as it goes.

It is also slower than it looks, because a slope you have to work across rather than down costs time and there is often nowhere near to put what comes off. Where material can be stacked in a corner rather than carried out, that saves you money.

Salt laden south westerlies come off the sea unbroken here, and the front ranks of housing take the full run of it. Growth on the seaward side is stunted and tough; growth two streets back, out of the wind, behaves like anywhere else in Devon.

Access across the town is generally good, with drives and estate roads, and the marina and Withycombe sides both have somewhere sensible to stand a trailer.

The inter-war and post-war suburbs at Withycombe Raleigh and Littleham are out of the salt wind and behave like any inland Devon suburb: proper soil, thick grass and gardens that grow steadily all season rather than in bursts.

They are also the easiest access in the town, with drives, gates and estate roads. Most of the straightforward domestic clearances here come from that side rather than from the front.