Clearing Over Grown Gardens

In my time I have cut back and cleared a lot of overgrown gardens and I did one today, and as I was placing some new pictures on my website on the Cut and Clear Over Grown Gardens, I thought I should try and put some words together on how I do it, now I have started writing about it, this does not seem to be that easy to transfer my actions and thoughts of what I am doing into the written word, so I think it might be best I provide a few key pointers of what you should be thinking about as and during you carry out your garden tidy, clear up or a full on cut back.

Preparation for the waste you are going to generate is the most important part I would say as you need to clear up regularly as you proceed or you will be tripping over the cuttings. Stuffing them into a corner or under another bush is not really the best way, as it will just be there waiting for you to move it again so just get rid of small amounts of cuttings regularly is the best way.

Now you have a place for your green waste or cuttings to go, judge how much the area, bin you have will take, once that is full you should stop until it is emptied or you will land up with a garden full of cuttings with nowhere to place them. So carry out your work load to suit your green waste disposal area you have, and the work will become more pleasurable if your garden remains tidy.

Identify which plants you want to keep, and then find out when they supposed to be pruned and how it best to prune them to get the best from that plant. Any plant you do not want to keep you can cut them any time, just remember that if you are going to carry out any hard cut backs, that nest of birds are protected under Environmental Law from March to September, so carry out a thorough inspection of what you are thinking of cutting back for any nests, if in doubt just leave the cutting back until the winter months October to February, this is what I do, I carry out hardcutbacks for my customers from October onwards.

If you have a lot of plants to cut back in a really overgrown garden, then you have to really stop yourself from looking at the garden as a whole, or the amount of work will overwhelm you and you will be distracted fro what is in front of you, choose the direction you are going to work in through the plants and then just concentrate on working on them one at a time and clear up the cuttings as you are going along.

So now you are about a third of the way through the garden, this would be a good time to drop back to the beginning and carry out some raking or strimming or use the leaf blower, whatever you have to do to try and bring that area more up to a finished standard you are trying to achieve, leaving the clean up till the end, you will be tired and the enthusiasm you have for cutting back you will not have it for the clean-up so try and do it in stages as you’re going along, so you end up finishing the cutting back with a small amount of cleaning up to do at the end.

Now you have finished the cut back, just take a moment and look at the work you have done, when you return in 12 months to carry out light pruning or hedge cutting are the cuts you have made going to be in your cutting line next year, thick trunks, branches need to be cut 150mm or 6 inches below your desired trim line next year, or you will be hitting every one of these stumps with your cutter next year, and cursing every stroke not quite understanding why you are having such a hard time of it, so take this time to make your life easier next year by dropping them thick branches or trunks down below your desired cut line.  

And remember to take picture of before and after, you will not see the diffrence you are making as you are working through it, but you will enjoy looking at the pictures and I am sure you will suprise yourself on the amount of diffrence you will have made.