Frequently asked questions

Standing vegetation that a domestic strimmer cannot handle. Bramble, thistle, nettle, dock, blackcurrant, thorn and similar scrub, plus soft woody stems up to roughly two inches. Long grass and rough grass as well, though that is the easy part.

The heavy growth is cut with a brush blade, then I swap to a line head to finish closer to the ground and get into corners and edges. That second pass is what leaves a plot workable rather than merely knocked back.

No clearing, raking, barrowing or waste removal. No hedge cutting, pruning or general gardening. No felling, stump removal or anything needing a chainsaw. No digging, and no chemicals.

This is deliberate rather than a limitation. Most people can rake and clear perfectly well, and can run their own waste to the tip. Paying someone else to do it roughly doubles the bill for work that takes no skill. What stops people is the cutting, so that is what I sell.

They stay where they fall. You clear them at your own pace, or leave them to rot down, or hire a skip — whatever suits.

Worth knowing: cut bramble and scrub is far easier to move once it has dried for a week or two. There is no advantage in tackling it the same afternoon.

It depends entirely on what is growing. One fully charged battery gives sixty to ninety minutes of cutting: about ninety minutes through long grass, nearer sixty through dense bramble.

For a real example, my own allotment plot took seventy-five minutes from waist-high growth to stubble. The before and after photographs are on the front page.

I look at a plot before quoting for exactly this reason. Photographs flatten everything — slope, ground conditions, how much of what you can see is actually woody.

We talk about it when the battery runs down, and there are two honest answers. Either a further day at £150, or we stop where we are.

If most of it is cut and you would rather finish the remainder yourself, that is often the sensible choice and I will say so rather than book another day for the sake of it.

The battery is a genuine physical limit, not a billing device. When it is flat it is flat, and pricing against what one charge actually achieves is more honest than a vague hourly rate.

No. A brush cutter is the wrong tool for a hedge, and hedge work is a different trade with different equipment and different training.

There is also a legal dimension: cutting a hedge between March and August risks disturbing nesting birds, which is a criminal offence. A hedge specialist will know the local picture better than I do.

Soft woody stems to roughly two inches. Bramble stools, blackcurrant, established thorn, willow whips, that sort of thing.

Beyond that it becomes a job for a chainsaw and someone qualified to use one. If the brush cutter will not go through it, it does not get cut — and I will tell you that when I look at the plot rather than after taking your money.

Light rain, yes. Heavy rain, high wind or unreliable footing, no — a spinning blade and a slip are a bad combination.

If I cancel for weather there is no charge and we rearrange. That is my call to make and my cost to absorb.

Ideally, yes. There are usually questions on the day — where the boundary actually runs, whether that patch is a plant or a weed, how close to cut around something.

If you cannot be there, access can be arranged in advance, but somebody needs to be reachable by telephone throughout.

Bristol and the surrounding area. Roughly forty-five minutes’ drive is the working limit, which covers most of the city, South Gloucestershire, North Somerset and a fair way into Bath and North East Somerset.

Further out, ask anyway. The answer depends on the drive rather than the mileage.

Because cutting or damaging a tree under a Tree Preservation Order without consent is a criminal offence, and the penalty falls on whoever did the cutting.

There is a second, less obvious one. Inside a conservation area, six weeks’ written notice must be given to the council before most tree work, whether or not any preservation order applies. That is a scheduling problem as much as a legal one: it means a job cannot simply be booked for next week.

None of this is difficult to look up, but it is tedious enough that most people would not bother. So I built something that does it in a couple of seconds.

Usually nothing dramatic. Most flags are context rather than an obstacle — a protected tree forty metres away does not stop work, it just means we agree where the blade goes nowhere near.

Where it does matter, we deal with it before booking. A conservation area means notice to the council. A protected tree in the working area means it stays untouched. Designated habitat nearby means more care about what gets disturbed.

The check informs the risk assessment. It does not decide anything on its own.

No, and this matters. The check runs against the centre of the postcode, not the boundaries of your land.

For a postcode covering a few houses that is close enough to be useful. For a large plot, or a postcode covering a wide area, the centre point may be some distance from where the work is.

Treat it as context for a site visit rather than a determination about a specific piece of ground. The proper assessment happens when I am standing on it.

Quite a lot, and it is better to be plain about it.

It reads what local authorities publish to the national planning data service. Some publish thoroughly, some publish conservation areas but no tree records, and some publish nothing at all. Where that is the case the check says so rather than reporting an absence as a clean sheet.

It does not cover major hazard sites under COMAH, which are held separately by the HSE. It does not cover buried services — though for surface cutting with no digging, that is a much smaller concern than it would be for groundworks.

It also cannot tell you about wildlife. No database reports whether there is a hedgehog in your long grass or a bird nesting in your bramble. Those are found by looking, before the machine starts.

Yes. It is free, it covers the whole of England, and there is no sign-up.

It was built because I needed it, and there is no reason to keep it to myself. If you are planning any ground work — landscaping, fencing, clearance, or just wondering what is protected near you — it is on this site.

If you want to build something on top of it, there is an API.

Usually a few days, though it depends on what is already booked and on the weather.

One thing that can add time: if the plot is inside a conservation area, six weeks’ notice to the council may be required before any tree work. That is worth finding out early, which is part of why the site check happens before a quote rather than after.

Before work starts on the day. Bank transfer, PayPal or cash — whichever suits, as long as it has actually arrived.

Trade customers working through purchase orders are invoiced on the usual terms, payable within thirty days.

More than twenty-four hours’ notice, no charge at all.

Inside twenty-four hours, the full day rate applies. The same applies if I arrive and cannot work — no access, no attendance where it was agreed, a dog loose in the working area, or the site turning out to be something other than described.

If I cancel, for weather or anything else, there is no charge.

Public liability insurance is arranged before any confirmed job begins, and details are available on request.

Being straight about the sequence: the business is new, and cover is put in place ahead of the first booking rather than being carried speculatively beforehand. No work is done without it.

Yes. I come and look at the plot, run the site check on the address, and tell you what I think it will take. No charge and no obligation.

The pricing is on the front page anyway — £200 for the first day, £150 for any further day — so the quote is really about how many days rather than what the rate is.