Strimming and overgrowth clearance in Tiverton

The town centre sits low where the Lowman meets the Exe and the residential streets climb sharply north and west, which means a lot of gardens are on a slope, on a terrace, or both. Steep ground is slower to cut and much slower to clear, because everything taken off has to be carried down rather than wheeled out.

Where a garden is stepped, each level is worked as its own small job. Saying how many levels there are, and whether there is a path or just steps, gets the estimate much closer than the square metres do.

The Grand Western Canal runs along the edge of the town and properties backing onto it inherit canal side growth: reed, coarse grass, bramble and self set willow, all of it fed by water that never runs dry. That strip grows through most of the year and is the heaviest part of any garden that touches it.

Material cut beside water is best loaded out rather than stacked, and the boundary line matters here as much as anywhere, because the towpath side is not yours to cut.

The Victorian terraces built for the mills have small yards and short gardens, frequently walled, and access is through the house or a shared passage. These are two hour jobs on cutting time and can be twice that on carrying time if there is no rear gate.

The post-war estates and the newer development on the eastern edge are the opposite: open, flat, gated and easy to work from, and they price as a straightforward suburban clearance.

The Exe valley here is notably wet, well above the county average, and that is the single biggest influence on how a garden behaves. Growth is thick, it starts early and it does not stop until late in the autumn.

Two cuts a year is the sensible pattern on anything with a boundary that matters, and the second one, taken in September, is quicker and cheaper than the first because there is less to take.

The town has a fair amount of institutional ground: school playing field edges, car park boundaries, the strips around sports pitches and shared grounds attached to housing. That work is about control rather than appearance and it is usually booked by the day.

It suits an early start and a single visit covering the whole boundary, and where a site needs the arisings gone rather than left, everything goes out under the waste carrier registration.

Where the same site needs doing more than once a season, agreeing the visits at the start of the year is easier than arranging each one separately, and it means the second cut lands while there is still less to take.