Strimming and overgrowth clearance in Honiton

Honiton is a linear town strung along the old coaching road, and behind its uniform Georgian frontages run narrow plots that go a surprisingly long way back. Many are reached only through a building or a shared yard, and a good few have not been dealt with properly in years because getting a machine to them is a nuisance.

The cutting on a plot like that is an hour or two. The carrying out can be the same again, which is why the estimate asks about access before it asks about size.

The Blackdown Hills rise steeply behind the town, and properties on that ground are a different proposition: bigger plots, steeper slopes, bracken and gorse on the rougher edges and boundaries measured in tens of metres rather than square metres.

That is brush cutter work with a blade rather than strimming, and it books by the day. Bracken on those slopes is best cut in June once the fronds are fully out, and cut again in late July if the point is to set it back rather than tidy it up.

The valley is prone to fog that sits for days, and ground here stays damp right through the winter months. That suits moss, ivy and everything that likes low light, and it means the shaded side of a boundary is usually in a worse state than the sunny side.

It also shortens the window for good cutting in the shoulder months. A dry week in September is worth taking, and a wet one is worth moving.

The post-war and modern estates north and west of the centre are ordinary suburban work: flat plots, side gates, drives to park on and somewhere sensible for a trailer. They are the quickest and most predictable jobs in the town.

For anything on the high street itself, where the trailer stands is the first question, because there is nowhere obvious and the loading has to happen from somewhere.

A good deal of the ground north and east of the town sits inside the Blackdown Hills, and boundaries there are old: species rich hedges, banks and rough margins that have been in the same line for a very long time. Cutting them wants some judgement about how hard to go.

Taking a hedge base back so a fence can be seen is one thing; taking a species rich bank to bare earth is another and is not what anyone should be asking for. What is wanted gets agreed before the machine starts.

The other thing worth agreeing beforehand is timing. Between March and August there are birds in these hedges, and hedge base work in that window is avoided where it can be, which sometimes means booking for September instead.