How long will my garden take?

As a rough guide, a fifty square metre back garden of knee high grass is inside the two hour minimum. A hundred and fifty square metres of chest high growth with brambles in the corners is closer to half a day once the raking and loading is counted.

Can you do it while I am out?

Yes, as long as there is access without going through the house and you have said where everything is beforehand. Photographs go over when it is done.

Will it kill the grass underneath?

No. Cutting long grass hard leaves it yellow and flat for a week or two and it greens up again once light gets to it. Bare patches are usually where the growth had already smothered it, not damage from the cut.

Exeter Strimming Services

Overgrown garden strimming and clearance

A garden that has stood for a season or several, cut down to ground level in one visit and raked off so you can see what you have got.

Book a clearance Call 07366 321657

The back garden of a red brick semi left through a summer, long grass and weeds up around a rotary washing line and an old bench, with bramble coming over the fence

This is the most common job on the book: a domestic garden that has been left long enough that mowing it is no longer an option. The grass has gone to seed and fallen over on itself, docks and nettles have come through it, and there is usually something buried in the middle that nobody wants to hit with a blade.

It is cut in passes rather than one sweep. Tall growth gets knocked down to knee height first, then taken to the ground on a second pass, because trying to take a metre of standing grass off in one go wraps the head and takes longer than doing it properly. What comes off is raked into windrows and either loaded out or left, whichever you have asked for.

By the end of it you have short stubble, visible boundaries and a garden you can make a decision about. Plenty of people book two hours to get it back to ground level and then take over the mowing themselves.

What is included

Cutting standing grass, weeds and light scrub down to short stubble
Working carefully around washing lines, drain covers, borders and anything you have flagged
Strimming out around sheds, trees, posts and the base of fences
Raking the cut material into windrows
Loading and removing the arisings, or stacking them where you want them
A quick sweep of hard surfaces so you are not walking cuttings into the house

What is under it matters more than what is on top

A brush cutter with a metal blade will go through almost anything soft, and will also fire whatever it meets sideways at speed. Old glass, a coil of fence wire, a buried brick edging, a plastic drain cover and a child's toy are all things that have been found in Devon gardens under a season of grass, and all of them change how the cut is done.

So the walk round before the machine starts is not a formality. Anything you know about gets marked and worked around by hand or with a nylon head instead of a blade. Anything nobody knew about gets found the careful way, which is why the first pass on a really overgrown plot is taken high rather than low.

Ground level, not lawn

It is worth being clear about what a clearance leaves you with, because the photographs on most sites are of a finished lawn and that is not what this is. What you get is short, even stubble, bare patches where the growth had killed the grass off underneath, and the shape of the plot back.

If you want a lawn out of it, that is the next stage and it is mostly a question of time and mowing rather than machinery. Plenty of gardens come back on their own within a few weeks of getting the light back. Some need scarifying and seed, and that is a different job.

Landlords, agents and probate

A fair share of this work is not for the person who lives there. Letting agents need a garden presentable between tenancies, executors need a house looking sellable, and neighbours sometimes need a boundary dealt with before it becomes an argument.

For those jobs the useful thing is usually the photographs afterwards, and they come as standard: the same corners as the before shots, so there is a record of what was done and when. Invoices go out under Hembury Contracting with the VAT shown.

On the day

How a overgrown gardens runs

Step 1
Send photographs and a postcode
Two or three photographs from different corners and a rough size in metres or in car lengths. That is enough to estimate the hours.
Step 2
Get an estimate in hours
Back comes a number of hours and what that should achieve, plus the next dates available. Nothing is charged for this.
Step 3
Flag what is hiding in it
Anything under the growth that a metal blade should not meet: glass, wire, dog bones, low walls, a pond, garden lights, a septic tank cover.
Step 4
Deposit and date
A 50% deposit of the estimated time books the day. Weather can move it, and you will be told rather than left waiting.
Step 5
The visit
The cut, the rake off and the load out, in one visit. If it turns out shorter than estimated you pay for the time used, subject to the two hour minimum.

Behind the work

Kit, cover and registration

Registered waste carrier

Hembury Contracting holds waste carrier registration CBDU641882, so the cut material can leave your property legally rather than being someone else's problem. Tipping is charged on at cost.

Public liability insurance

Cover is in place for the work. Brush cutters throw stones, and anyone taking one near your glass, your car or your neighbour's fence should be able to say what happens if one goes the wrong way.

Petrol brush cutters, not a domestic strimmer

Harness mounted machines with a metal blade for woody bramble and bracken and a nylon head for grass and edges. A hired garden strimmer will bog down in the first hour of anything that has stood for a season.

One rate, published

£60 an hour including VAT, two hour minimum. There is no free site visit to sit through, no per job quote to wait for and nothing to negotiate. What it costs depends on how long it takes.

Overgrown gardens