I was emailed at the beginning of March by a gentleman who had a property in Little Billing which he had been renting out for the past 10 years or so. He had once lived in the property and could remember what the garden looked like in great detail, however he hadn’t visited the property since he moved out and had been notified that the garden was now somewhat overgrown. What he imagined as being a little overgrown and the reality of the situation was somewhat different!
I have often been told by prospective customers that their garden is a little overgrown and to be honest most of the time what the garden needs is a little haircut and bringing back into line.
I agreed to meet the owner of the property as he was coming to see for himself the state that the garden was in as he now lives in the South of England. I was about 5 minutes away when he called me and was very apologetic and needed to pre-warn me that the garden was considerably worse than he had been told. I was sure that nothing could be so bad that it wasn’t fixable – however as I checked the numbers on the front of the properties along the street I looked up and said to my passenger “oh my god – we’re here!”
The whole garden was filled with pyracantha and brambles – we could even see an Ash Tree somewhere trying to fight for some light. We couldn’t even get in through the gate (see right).
The owner was absolutely horrified and in complete shock. I must admit I have never seen anything like it before but actually I was relishing the idea that we could help this gentleman and hoped he would allow us to do just that. My team could see that the job would be difficult and at times very painful but they too were really looking forward to getting stuck into the job. Thankfully the owner said “Yes if you’re mad enough to tackle that you’ve got the job”, my comment was “Nothing is impossible!”
It was a two day job, dealing with so many thorny plants and took three trips to the waste recycling plant.
We had to cut our way in and then cut a work area in the middle and work out. The picture is taken from outside the gate looking in.
During the job the neighbours all came and looked at what we were doing and gave their thumbs up to the job. Obviously they had had to look at the garden and were more than a little relieved that something was finally being done.
The end result was a cleared space, although we are in discussions with the owner in the hope we can continue to return the garden to its former glory with a lawn but further work needs doing to get it to that stage.
For now though the neighbours are very pleased and the customer is too. Below are the pictures of the garden once all the pyracantha and brambles had been cut down awaiting the next stage of the garden makeover.
Project Completed: Feb 2015
