The Kent Hedge Standard
Ten points, written down, that every hedge we cut is held to. You can read them, and you can check them.
The Kent Hedge Standard
Ten points we hold ourselves to on every hedge, on every visit, whether the job takes forty minutes or three days.
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Straight
Where you have asked for a formal finish, the edges will be straight, set out with a line rather than judged by eye. A hedge that is only nearly straight looks worse than one that was never meant to be.
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Symmetrical
Height and shape are checked from several viewpoints before we finish, including the window you actually look at the hedge from. A top that reads level from the ladder is very often not level from the house.
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Hedge-safe
We cut to keep the hedge healthy, not only to make it smaller today. No unnecessary gouging, and no cutting back into old wood on a species that will never reshoot from it.
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Wildlife-safe
Every hedge is checked for active nests before a blade is started, in line with the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. The main nesting season runs from roughly 1 March to 31 August, and where we find a nest in use we stop and come back.
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Clean
Loose clippings are blown out of the hedge rather than left sitting in the top to brown off. A freshly cut hedge full of dead material looks unkempt again within a fortnight.
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Tidy
Paths, beds, lawns and driveways are cleared before we leave. You should not be able to tell where we have been working except by looking at the hedge.
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Responsible
Green waste is taken off site and disposed of responsibly. It does not go over the back fence, into the hedge bottom, or behind the shed.
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Secure
Gates are closed and latched when the work is finished, every time, whether or not anybody is home. Pets and small children are the reason this one is on the list.
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Documented
We photograph the hedge before we start and again after we finish, and keep both against your record. It settles any question about what was done, and it tells the next visit where to pick up.
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Approved
Before we pack up we ask you to look at the hedge while we are still there to change something. Approval on the day, not a complaint a week later.
Because nobody can inspect a hedge they were not standing next to
Hedge cutting is bought on trust. Most customers are at work while the work happens, and by the time anyone looks closely the evidence has been swept up.
That is exactly why the trade has the reputation it has. A hedge can be cut badly and still look acceptable for a fortnight. The gouge in the face of a leylandii does not show until the brown comes through. The top that was never straight only becomes obvious when the new growth exaggerates it. The nest that was destroyed is nobody's problem because nobody saw it.
A written standard is how we make that checkable. Every point on the list is something you can see the result of, or something we can show you a photograph of. It is not a promise about how much we care. It is a list of things that either happened or did not.
Nesting birds and the law
Under section 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 it is an offence to intentionally take, damage or destroy the nest of any wild bird while that nest is in use or being built. There is no exemption for garden maintenance, no exemption for a booking that was hard to arrange, and no exemption for a hedge that badly needed cutting.
The main UK nesting season runs from roughly 1 March to 31 August. Those dates are guidance rather than law: a blackbird may be on eggs in February and a woodpigeon may still be sitting in September. What the law cares about is whether the nest is in use, not the date on the calendar.
So we look. Dense hedges are checked face by face before the machines come out, and we look again as we work, because the nest that was hidden from the path is often obvious from the ladder. If we find an active nest we stop work on that section. Depending on the hedge we will cut a different face, cut the far end, or come back after the birds have fledged. We will tell you which, and we will not charge you for the inconvenience of a decision the law makes for both of us.
The practical consequence is that heavy work on a dense hedge belongs to late summer, autumn and winter. That is one of the reasons HedgeCare exists: if we are the ones holding the diary, reduction and rescue work lands in the part of the year where it should.
What we will not do
- Cut through an active nestNot for a deadline, not for a customer who insists, not because the hedge looks terrible. We stop and we reschedule.
- Cut a conifer into brown woodIf you ask us to take a leylandii below its green growth we will explain what the result looks like, and we will not do it unless you want the hedge gone.
- Quote a figure we cannot holdThe price we give is the price on the invoice unless you ask us to do something different once we are there.
- Leave the cuttingsNot in the hedge bottom, not stacked in a corner, not for the council to collect. They leave with us.
- Work above our reachWhere a hedge needs a platform, a tower or a tree surgeon rather than the equipment on our van, we say so and we tell you what it does need.
- Guess at a topA level top is set out and checked. It is not judged by eye from the bottom of a ladder and hoped for.
Hold us to it
Tell us about your hedge and we will tell you what it needs. Then you have a list to measure the result against.