Strimming and overgrowth clearance in Heavitree

Heavitree is built solid, a former village swallowed by the city, and its core is terraces packed either side of Fore Street and Well Street. Behind them run long thin gardens, most of them backing onto other long thin gardens, with a rear lane serving some rows and nothing at all serving others.

Where there is a back lane the work is quick, because the machine and the barrow go straight in and the cut material goes straight out. Where there is not, everything travels through the house or down a shared passage, and that is the difference between a two hour job and a half day on the same amount of growth.

The ground rises gently towards Wonford and falls the other way towards the Northbrook valley, and the bottom end holds damp far longer than the streets on the ridge. Gardens on that side grow harder, hold moss in the lawn and are noticeably heavier to cut once the growth is down.

Wet growth is slower work and makes a worse finish, so on the low side of Heavitree a dry week is worth waiting for. It is also the part of the district where a second cut later in the season earns its money, because the regrowth comes back fast.

Further out towards the ring road the pattern changes. Inter-war semis and later infill have proper back gardens with side access and a gate, and they are some of the easiest domestic clearances in the city: a machine straight down the side, cut, rake, load, gone.

These are also the plots where people most often want the ground back rather than the whole garden dealt with. Taking a season of growth off and leaving the owner to mow it from there is a perfectly good outcome and takes two hours rather than a day.

The streets nearest the Royal Devon and Exeter at Wonford are under constant parking pressure, and a pickup with a trailer needs somewhere to sit for the length of the job. Where a drive or a permit bay can be freed up for the morning it saves real time.

Heavitree Park and the Fore Street parade are the two landmarks most people use to describe where they are, and either is enough to place a job for an estimate alongside the postcode.

The terraces here have small front gardens and low walls onto the pavement, and that narrow strip is where a plot first starts to look neglected from the street. It is fifteen minutes of work on a job that is already booked and it changes what the property looks like more than the back garden does.

Landlords and agents ask for it more often than owners do, for the obvious reason. If the front matters to you, say so when booking, because it is easy to add to a visit and awkward to come back for.