HedgeCare
We remember so you do not have to.
Nobody forgets a bill. Everybody forgets a hedge
Ask most people when their hedge was last cut and you get a guess with a year in it. Ask them when it should next be cut and you get a shrug.
That is not carelessness. A hedge gives almost no warning. It grows a few inches a month through the season and looks fine right up until the afternoon you notice you cannot reach the top of it any more. By then the job has changed. What would have been a routine Hedge Tidy in September has become a reduction next spring, which costs more, takes longer and leaves the hedge looking worse for a season while it recovers.
Every expensive hedge job we are ever called to started as a cheap one that was left. HedgeCare is our answer to that, and it is the reason most of our customers never need a rescue.
Five things, and four of them are ours
HedgeCare is not a product with a plastic card. It is an arrangement: we take on the remembering, the timing and the record-keeping, and you approve the work.
We inspect the hedge
Species, length, height, width, condition, aspect, what the previous cuts have done to it, and how formal a finish you want. A privet in full sun on a road frontage and a beech in the shade of a north wall are not the same hedge and do not want the same treatment.
We set its cycle
One, two or three visits a year, placed at the right points in the season for that species and worked around the nesting season. Beech, hornbeam, yew and mixed native hedgerow are usually one late cut. Privet, laurel, escallonia and photinia are usually two. Leylandii and western red cedar are two or three, because a conifer you cut often is a conifer you can still control.
We book the year
Your visits go into our diary for the twelve months ahead with an agreed price against them. You are not competing for a slot in September with everybody else who left it late.
We remind you
You hear from us before each visit, not after you noticed the hedge had got away from you. If the date does not suit, we move it. If the season has run early or late, we move it ourselves and tell you why.
We keep the record
Photographs and notes from every visit, kept against your hedge. The next cut continues the last one instead of starting again from an opinion. Over three or four years that record is what keeps a hedge crisp rather than slowly drifting.
The honest version: HedgeCare exists because a hedge cut on a schedule is cheaper to own, easier to cut, and looks better than the same hedge cut when somebody remembers.
A hedge held at a chosen height is trimmed back to a known line each time. The cuts are light, the machine goes through green growth, and the finish is even because there is a previous line to work to. Nothing about it is difficult.
The same hedge left two seasons has to be cut back into thicker wood. That takes longer, blunts more blades, produces four times the waste, and leaves cut ends that take a season to green over. On a conifer it may not be recoverable at all. The work is harder, so it costs more, and the result is worse. That is the whole argument.
There is no premium for the arrangement itself. HedgeCare is how we schedule work, not a subscription bolted on top of it. You pay for the visits your hedge needs, at a price agreed before the year starts.
A hedge on a schedule is a cheaper hedge
Three sorts of customer, one arrangement
- HouseholdsThe common case. Two hedges, a boundary and a front, cut once or twice a year for as long as you live there. You stop thinking about it after the first inspection.
- Landlords and agentsScheduled visits at let properties with photographs for the file and no need for anybody to attend. See Landlord Hedge Care.
- Businesses and sitesFixed visit windows, documented work, one invoice across several addresses. See Commercial Hedge Maintenance.
HedgeCare and the Annual Hedge Plan
The two go together and are often confused. The Annual Hedge Plan is the schedule itself: one, two or three visits a year at an agreed price. HedgeCare is what wraps around it, the inspection that sets the cycle, the reminders, the seasonal judgement about moving a date, and the photographic record that carries from one year to the next. You can have the plan without the rest. Most people find the rest is the part they actually wanted.
HedgeCare, answered
Am I tied into a contract?
No. The visits are booked for the year ahead so that the dates exist, but you can change a date, skip a visit or stop the arrangement by telling us. We would rather keep customers because the hedges look right than because of a clause.
What happens if the season runs early or late?
We move the visit. A warm wet spring can put three weeks of extra growth on a privet, and a cold one can mean a booked date arrives with nothing to cut. Judging that is our job, not yours, and it is most of the value in the arrangement.
Does HedgeCare cover the rescue work first?
Can I have HedgeCare on one hedge and not the others?
Yes. Plenty of gardens have a formal front hedge that wants two clips a year and a back boundary that is happy with one late cut. The cycle is set per hedge, not per address.
Do I get the photographs?
On request, always. They are taken for the work record and to settle any question about what was done, and they are yours if you want them. We do not publish photographs of anybody's garden without asking first.
Start with an inspection
Tell us where the hedge is and roughly what it is. We will look at it, set its cycle, and put the year in the diary.