It comes back.
Garden clearance and upkeep across south London. However far it has gone, it is a couple of days of work and a grab lorry, not a lost cause.
Move the pointer across the carriage
Get it looked atNothing here is too far gone.
The carriage above sat in a siding for eleven years. A garden left one summer is a morning's work. Left five, it is two days and a lorry. Neither of them is beyond doing.
Cut and dug, not poisoned.
No glyphosate and no weed fabric. Bramble and ivy come out at the root with a mattock, the woody growth goes through the chipper, and the chip goes straight back on the beds.
- Out at the root, by hand
- Chipped on site where we can
- Green waste away under licence
Then we keep it.
Most clearances turn into a fortnightly or monthly hour rather than another two days, and the garden never gets back to where it was.
£55an hour, two of us and a van
Get it looked at
The clearance
One visit, priced before anything is cut. Everything you want gone comes out, the waste leaves with us, and you get the ground back at a level you can actually work with.
The keeping
Then a fortnightly or monthly hour. Edges, beds, the hedge twice a year and the gutters in November, so it never has to be a clearance again.
What the two days actually look like.
This is a back garden of about a hundred square metres left four or five years. Bigger, steeper or full of builders' waste takes longer, and we say so before we start rather than after.
- Day one, 8am
Walk it and price it
Ten minutes to agree what stays. Every clearance has something in it worth keeping and it is rarely obvious from the house.
- Day one, midday
Bramble and ivy
The bulk of the work. Out at the root where the ground allows it, cut low and dug out where it does not.
- Day one, 4pm
First load away
The van goes out full and comes back empty, so nothing sits on your drive overnight.
- Day two, morning
Woody growth
Anything with a trunk on it, brought down to a height you can reach from the ground next year without a ladder.
- Day two, 3pm
Level, edge and go
Ground raked level, edges cut in, beds mulched with whatever went through the chipper, and photographs sent the same evening.
The things people apologise for.
It is really bad. Is that a problem?
No. Most of what we do is gardens people stopped looking at, usually after a year that had other things in it. We have never turned one down for being too overgrown and nobody on the van is judging it.
There is wildlife in there.
Almost always, and that is a good thing. We check for nesting birds between March and August and work around anything active. Hedgehog piles and log stacks get left alone or rebuilt somewhere sensible.
Will you take everything out?
Only what you want gone. We walk it with you first and mark what stays. Fruit trees, anything established and anything somebody planted on purpose usually stay.
Where does the waste go?
A licensed green waste transfer station. We carry the waste carrier registration and will show it to you. Nothing is burned and nothing goes over the back fence.
Do I have to be there?
For the first ten minutes, so we agree what stays. After that you can go to work. We lock up behind us and send photographs when it is done.
Get it looked at.
Send a photograph from an upstairs window and roughly where you are. We reply with a price for the clearance, what it would cost to keep afterwards, and the first date we could come.