How Often Should You Jet Wash a Driveway?
Leave it too long and the moss wins. Do it too often and you wash the sand out of the joints. Here is the middle ground.
When to Cut Hedges, and When to Leave Them Alone
Timing matters more than technique with most garden hedges, and there is a legal side to it as well.
Nesting season comes first
Between March and August birds are likely to be nesting, and it is an offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act to damage an active nest. We check before we cut, and if there is a nest in there the hedge waits. No job is worth getting that wrong.
Formal hedges
Privet, box and beech are usually cut in late summer once the main growth has hardened off, with a lighter tidy in spring if they are growing strongly. That gives a crisp shape that holds through the winter.
Conifers and leylandii
Cut them little and often into green growth. Leylandii will not regrow from old brown wood, so once you cut past the green that face stays bare. If a conifer has already outgrown the space, reducing the height and accepting a flatter top is usually the sensible option.
Getting a straight top
Run a line. It sounds fussy but a string line down a long hedge is the difference between a hedge that looks cut and a hedge that looks landscaped.
Clearing up
Sheet the ground before you start. Picking clippings out of gravel or a border afterwards takes longer than the cutting did. If you would rather not spend the weekend on it, hedge trimming is one of the jobs we do most.
Want it doing properly instead?
We cover Milton Keynes and the surrounding villages. Send a photo over and we will give you a fixed price.
Ready for a tidier, cleaner outside?
Send us a couple of photos on WhatsApp and we will come back with a price. No pushy sales, no call centre, just a straight answer from the people doing the work.