Professional Gardening Services in Nunhead

Leaf fall is not a single event but a process spread over six weeks or more, and the difference between clearing it once and clearing it three times shows up in the state of the lawn the following March. Gardens around SE15 sit under a heavy canopy of mature limes, planes, sycamores and horse chestnuts, much of it older than the houses, and in a wet autumn the volume coming down is enough to smother a small back garden entirely if it is left where it lands.

What a wet leaf mat does to grass

Leaves flattened by rain form a seal. Light is excluded, air movement stops, and moisture is held permanently against the crowns of the grass plants underneath. Within about three weeks the sward beneath begins to yellow, and by late winter that patch is bare soil that moss and annual weeds colonise before the grass can recover. The same mat over a border rots the crowns of herbaceous plants and gives slugs somewhere warm and damp to spend the winter.

Clearing to the drop rather than to the diary

A single visit booked for the end of November clears whatever has already fallen and none of what follows. Clearance is better spread across the drop, timed to weather and to which species are shedding, since planes and sycamores go early and oaks hang on well past the others. Blowing leaves into windrows and collecting them is faster than raking, but a blower used on a border strips mulch and small plants along with the leaves, so beds are hand-cleared and lawns are blown.

The one garden by-product worth keeping

Leaves stacked separately in a wire bin or in perforated bags break down by fungal action rather than bacterial, needing no turning and no green material, and produce a dark crumbly leaf mould inside a year that is better as a soil conditioner than anything purchased. It costs nothing but space. What does not work is adding leaves in quantity to an ordinary compost heap, where they mat together and simply sit there undecomposed.

Gutters, gullies and the drain nobody checks

The leaf problem is not confined to the ground. Gullies at the foot of a downpipe block first, then the gutter itself, and a Victorian rear extension with a valley gutter will hold a surprising volume before anything overflows. Clearing the trap at ground level and checking that water actually runs away is part of an autumn round, not an extra. Leaf litter left to rot on flags and steps leaves a black film that pressure washing cover across Nunhead removes properly once the season has finished.

Planting the ground a canopy has taken over

Soil beneath mature trees is dry, root-filled and shaded for most of the growing season, and conventional border planting gives up within two years. Epimedium, hardy geraniums, ferns, Japanese anemone, pulmonaria and the tougher spring bulbs hold their own. Planting goes in during autumn with a generous mulch and without attempting to dig a conventional bed, since severing large roots to make room harms the tree and gains very little. Gardens on the more open ground covered by what the visit includes have the opposite difficulty.

Piles left standing attract more than fungi

A heap of leaves stacked against a shed or fence and forgotten is exactly the shelter rats and, at the other end of the year, hedgehogs look for. Deliberate habitat piles are placed away from buildings; accidental ones against a wall are not. Where runs, droppings or gnawing are already evident, the matter passes to the pest control team in Nunhead rather than being raked over. Bonfires are not an answer either, given how badly wet leaves burn.

What an autumn programme covers

Leaf work is charged by visit length, with the number of visits set by how much canopy overhangs the plot rather than by its size. A realistic autumn runs to several passes between mid-October and early December, plus a final cut of the lawn at a raised height and a gutter and gully check. Volumes from a heavily treed garden exceed what a round vehicle can take in one go, at which point our Blackheath team moves the bulk, and the wider seasonal pattern is set out on how our garden maintenance works.