Gardening Services Close to You in Sidcup

The back gardens behind the interwar semis of DA14 are long, and the feature that dominates most of them is not the lawn but the boundary. Sixty or seventy feet of hedge down each side, planted when the houses went up or added since, now doing the work of a fence, a windbreak and a screen at once. How that hedge is cut, and when, determines more about the garden than anything happening in the borders.

Cutting to a face that will thicken

A hedge cut to a slight batter, wider at the base than at the top, lets light reach the lower growth and stays dense to the ground. Cut it with vertical or, worse, overhanging sides and the bottom thins out within a few seasons and never recovers on its own. Working to a line rather than by eye is what produces a face that looks right from the house, and it takes longer to set up than it does to cut.

Species that forgive hard pruning, and one that does not

Yew, privet, hornbeam, beech, laurel and box all break from old wood, so an overgrown specimen can be reduced hard over two or three seasons, one side at a time, and will come back. Leylandii will not. Cut into bare brown wood on a conifer of that type and the gap stays bare permanently, which is why height reduction on an established leyland hedge is a decision that cannot be reversed and deserves a conversation before the saw comes out.

The dates that constrain the work

Wild birds, their nests and their eggs are protected while in use, and hedges are the commonest nesting site in a suburban garden. The main season runs from early spring into late summer, so heavy cutting is planned around it and any trimming during it is preceded by a genuine check rather than a glance. Beyond wildlife, deciduous hedges are best reduced when dormant, while evergreens take better to a light trim in the growing season.

When a hedge becomes a legal matter

Where an evergreen boundary over two metres blocks a neighbour's light, local authorities have powers to require a reduction after a complaint, and the process is slow and expensive for everyone involved. Keeping a hedge at a sensible height is a great deal easier than defending one. Anything genuinely tree-sized, or requiring work in the canopy with a chainsaw, is a different trade, and protection orders may apply to individual specimens in these gardens.

Leaves, and the quantity a mature boundary drops

A long garden enclosed by mature planting produces an enormous autumn fall. Left on grass it smothers the sward and encourages moss; left in gutters and gullies it causes damp problems at the house. Collected and stacked it rots down into an excellent soil conditioner. What leaves the site does so under the duty of care that applies to any commercial carrier of waste.

Clearance, and what it turns up

Reducing a boundary that has been left for years produces a startling volume of material, and a clearance in one of these gardens usually also uncovers collapsed fence panels, old paving slabs and the remains of a shed. Non-green material of that kind is handled through our waste removal in Bexleyheath, and a single bulky item needing a short run is the sort of job man and van specialists in Sidcup covers. Dense undisturbed cover of this type is also where rodents and wasps establish, and treatment of an existing problem sits with our local team.

Agreeing the work

Hedge work is priced by the time on site and the number of gardeners, with arisings charged by volume, because a full-height reduction on a long boundary generates far more than a routine visit. Rear access, an outside tap and a staging point for cuttings are worth confirming first, along with whether the neighbour's side is being cut and with what agreement. Comparable gardens a short distance away are described on local gardening across Welling, and the wider scope is set out on hedge trimming.