Strimming and overgrowth clearance in Kenton

Kenton is a village rather than a suburb, and the gardens behind the cottages on the main street and the lanes running down towards the water are long, often narrow and frequently bounded by hedge rather than fence. A hedge boundary is a different job to a fence: the base of it grows out into the garden, and taking the plot back means taking the hedge base back with it.

Bungalows and detached houses on the lanes have larger, more open ground and are quicker per square metre, which is why a booking here is usually half a day or a day rather than the two hour minimum.

The lanes between the village and the foreshore are banked on both sides, and those banks carry everything: cow parsley in spring, nettle and bramble through summer, and by August a face of growth that has closed a metre in from the road.

Frontage cutting is common work here, usually so a gateway or a bend has its sightline back. Frontage is cut to the boundary line and no further, because the verge beyond it belongs to the highway authority and is theirs to schedule.

Powderham and its deer park sit right beside the village, and there is a lot of estate cottage housing tied to it, much of it with long hedges and old boundary walls. Work of that kind wants a light touch: nylon head near stonework, blade in the open, and nothing thrown towards a wall or a window.

Where a boundary runs alongside parkland or grazing, stock needs to be clear of the ground being cut before a machine starts. It is a short conversation that avoids a long problem.

The estuary side takes salt laden wind straight up the water, which keeps the most exposed growth in check. The inland side, sheltered by rising red sandstone fields, warms early and grows hard from March onwards.

In practice that means the two halves of the same property can need cutting a month apart, and a single visit late in spring often catches both at a sensible point.

The Exe Estuary Trail runs along this side of the water, and any boundary onto it grows out into the path within a season. Cutting a frontage back to the line is quick work and it is one of the few jobs where the benefit is as much for the passing walker as the owner.

Where a hedge or bank is on the trail side of a boundary it is worth being clear about who owns what before a machine starts. Growth is cut to the line and the cut material stays on your side of it.

Because so much of the work here is length rather than area, it is worth pacing a boundary before sending the enquiry. A number of metres and a rough height of growth gets the estimate far closer than a photograph on its own.