Bristol and the surrounding area
The bit your strimmer won’t cut
Bramble, thistle, blackcurrant, thorn, and soft woody stems up to about two inches. Cut down and left where they fall, for you to clear at your own pace.
My own allotment, cut last week. Seventy-five minutes of actual cutting, which is what one fully charged battery gives on growth like this.
The problem with an overgrown plot
You are stuck between two options, and neither is much good.
Do it yourself
- A domestic strimmer stops dead at bramble
- Line snaps constantly on woody stems
- Hand tools take a full weekend, or several
- Thistle and thorn are miserable to fight through
- Hiring a machine means learning to use it safely
Hire a gardener
- Charged by the hour, including the easy parts
- Raking and barrowing billed at the same rate as cutting
- Waste removal added on top
- Often booked weeks out for a full day’s work
- You could have done the clearing yourself
The difficult part is the cutting. Everything after it — the raking, the barrow, the run to the tip — is work you can do perfectly well on a Saturday, and paying someone else to do it doubles the bill for no skill.
What I actually do
Turn up with a professional brush cutter, work through the heavy growth with a blade, switch to a line head to finish closer and tidier than you could manage yourself, and leave. That is the whole job.
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1
Look at it first
I come and see the plot before quoting. Photographs help, but they flatten everything — ground conditions, slope, what is hiding under the growth.
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2
Check what is protected
The postcode goes through the Greenviews site check: protected trees, conservation areas, designated habitat, flood warning zones. Cutting a protected tree without consent is a criminal offence, and in a conservation area six weeks’ notice to the council is required before most tree work at all. Better to know beforehand.
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3
Blade through the heavy growth
A brush blade goes through bramble, thistle, and soft woody stems to roughly two inches. This is the part a domestic strimmer cannot do.
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4
Finish with a line head
Swap to line to cut closer to the ground, around edges, and into corners. Leaves the plot workable rather than merely knocked back.
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5
Leave it where it falls
Cut material stays on the ground for you to rake and clear when it suits. No barrowing, no tip runs, nothing added to the bill.
What gets cut, and what doesn’t
Yes
- Bramble, thistle, nettle, dock
- Blackcurrant, thorn, and similar scrub
- Soft woody stems to roughly two inches
- Long grass, rough grass, overgrown paths
- Close finishing with a line head
No
- Clearing, raking, or barrowing
- Waste removal or tip runs
- Hedges, topiary, or general gardening
- Timber, stumps, or established saplings
- Protected trees — a criminal offence without consent
What it costs
One day, one battery
Looking at the job beforehand, travel, and a full battery of cutting on site — sixty to ninety minutes of blade time depending on how heavy the growth is.
Each further day, if we agree one
Sometimes a plot is heavier than it looked and the battery runs down before the job is finished. If that happens we talk about it: another day at £150, or we stop where we are. If eighty per cent is cut and you would rather finish the rest yourself, that is a sensible answer and I will say so.
The battery is the honest limit here, not a billing device. When it is flat, it is flat — so the price is quoted against what one charge actually achieves rather than a vague hourly rate.
Getting in touch
There is no booking form yet — it is being built. In the meantime, email or ring and tell me roughly where the plot is and how bad it has got. A photograph is worth a paragraph.
Bristol and the surrounding area. If you are further out, ask anyway — the answer depends on how long it takes to get there.
Greenviews is a division of pw‑services. Public liability insurance is arranged before any confirmed job begins.