How do I deal with a massively overgrown garden?

[MariaDingbat]

This is an incredibly privileged problem to have, I completely acknowledge that, but could really use some advice as I'm out of my depth.

My husband inherited his parents home and sadly they had been ill and unable to upkeep them house for a long time. It's got a half acre of garden with awful llyandi hedges along the drive and on two boundaries. They are huge, the boundary ones are over 2 stories high! What is the best way to take them out? Can we even take them out? We have to do the work ourselves as we have been quoted 2k just to cut back the driveway, which is way beyond us.

The rest of the garden is overgrown and covered in ivy and moss as no light had been getting in. I'm thinking of just getting a mini digger, chipper and skip and culling as much as we can. Any advice is this is even a possible thing?

Taking down leylandii isn't a DIY job. You'll need professionals for that.

Removing plants at ground level can be done yourselves. Not sure about using a mini digger though, as that will churn up the ground and it won't leave it level afterwards.

Ivy doesn't have deep roots, it's more of a runner.

I think you are going to need to think about what you can hire, and what you might need to buy to keep in top in future.

One of the big issues is getting rid of all the garden waste so hiring a chipper for the weekend is a good idea. It will also provide you with material for mulch and a bit of weed suppression. If there are areas where you really need to kill everything then get in plenty of the black fabric too.
April is a good time for grass seed if it's easier to lawn patches than to keep weeding huge borders.

But you probably need your own chain saw. We have a conventional one but also bought the Ryobi mini one on a pole so you can get up to 3m and obviously a bit more with a platform.

You will need to invest in some kit for future control.

Are you going to sell the house? If so could you just sell it at a slightly lower price that reflects the work needed to the garden?

We have tackled Leylandii ourselves, one at a time with a saw and chain saw. In fact the hand saw was great - you just need to do a branch or so at a time and lastly the trunk. But it took ages!!!!

I think the biggest issues are having the tools to do it and disposing of everything afterwards. I can imagine an half acre overgrown garden would fill a skip many times over

We removed 32 leylandii which were about 15ft, it was hard work and took a long time. We started out with a chainsaw and started by cutting the branches off. We then halved the size of the trunks. Then came the fun part - we used a block and tackle with straps to manually pull out the stumps. Now that was extremely hard, manual work. We bought a shredder to get rid of the branches which took many months - we had 2 garden waste bins and every week they were full. If you can afford it I would recommend having them removed by professionals.

Do you have to remove the Leylandii? Possibly you could get them trimmed / shaped to make them look a bit neater and deal with them later (if you plan to move in). I have some at the back of my garden which look fine as a tall hedge. I did have some smaller ones removed at the front of the property but left the stumps / roots in place as I was told they would rot down over time.

NB if you do it yourself please be careful - chopping down tall trees is a specialist task, and you risk injuring yourselves or causing damage to the property if they are close enough.

Regarding the back, I would not use a digger. Could you hire a gardener for half a day to get it under control?

You may need planning to remove trees- here is it any trunk over 7.5 cms in diameter. Ask a professional

Why do you need to take the hedge out? It's probably a selling point. After a prune it will look really smart.
Just prune it off to a reasonable height. You can do this with a hand saw or hedge clipper.

I wouldn't have thought you need a mini digger for a gardening job, but a chipper will be really useful. The waste can be chipped then laid down as mulch.

Ivy is a hand job not a machine job, You need to just get in there and pull it up. You'll get a giant pile of ivy - can you dry it out and burn it where you are? It rains so much where are so we cant do that, we took our ivy to the tip in those giant gardening bags in the car. It won't chip either it'll only tangle up in the chipper so don't even try that!

How far is the local tip? You could do a load of trips in the car with the back seats down rather than hire a skip.

Beware of pruning conifers - if you cut too far back it won't regrow and will just look ugly and brown. I didn't know this, and left a conifer hedge (not as tall as yours, about six foot) for a couple of years after I moved here. I cut it back hard and ruined it, I had to get a chainsaw and cut it down completely.

Yep it’s doable.
We did ours, and a quite tall oak tree, with just a bow saw, an axe, a rope and many, many trips to the recycling centre.
We did eventually get someone to come round and use their stump grinder to grind the stumps out, just so we actually had a chance to re plant in the areas.
We were mid 40’s and not the fittest tbh but we were so glad to get rid of them.

Can you pay a tree surgeon to reduce the height of the the hedges by half and maybe tidy the sides so they are straight? Then you will still have defined boundaries and won't have to buy e.g. new fencing, which is surprising expensive. An hourly rate for a tree surgeon and chipper is surprising reasonable IME and they work quickly.

The hedges will have visible stumps from above, but will look absolutely fine from ground level.

For overgrown borders, define the edges, then ruthlessly weed everything in the border. Any areas of major weed infestations can be dealt with by laying sheets of cardboard and covering with mulch (perhaps wet cardboard). Most weeds underneath will die.

Regarding the weed suppression method I just mentioned, wet cardboard, multiple sheets of wet newspaper, old carpet, - these all work. With cardboard and newspaper you can still cut holes if you want to plant staff later. You will need to buy bark mulch to cover them with (also weighs down the suppression layer so it wasn't lift or blow away). We even managed to sort our ground elder problem this way. It is quicker than mass weeding.

As pp says, check tree preservation orders, but what will almost certainly apply are legal protections for nesting birds (March -August) which prevent tree felling and significant pruning. And I assume you will check deeds for who is responsible/owns the hedges/trees on boundaries.

I would pay to get tree surgeons out to deal with the conifers.

My neighbours did this with a tall leylandii hedge for a few years and the hedge looks much better.

You need someone who understands how they grow. Before the proper tree surgeons, it was just people with a chain saw that bluntly cut the top off, so it looked awful, then it just grew more bits upwards. Now it looks quite attractive and bushier in a healthy way.

You need professional help, it will save you days and days of work. Just think, if professionals are charging you 2k, how long do you think it’ll take you? Can you not take the hit and then recoup the money when you sell the house?

We've just had some leylandi removed and watching the men do it gives you a serious appreciation for the danger and skill involved. After the tree is removed, the stump then needs to be ground out otherwise you have a decaying piece of wood attracting fungus etc for 20+ years.

There are four reasons I would say don't do it yourself

1. working at height is very dangerous even for the trained and skilled.
2. working at height with a chain saw is extremely dangerous.
3. serious danger of injury to people on the ground or property from falling trunk parts or limbs - when you are cutting, you need to be sure that the parts you are cutting will fall where you intend them to.
4. a large tree is A LOT of wood and very heavy. The professionals come with a log chipping machine to grind it into mulch.

If you cant' afford £2k for the lot, I'd suggest you get a quote for someone to remove one, watch them do it and then have a serious think about whether you should do the rest yourself.

It's like anything else in life, of course an amateur CAN do it but it will take a lot lot longer, the job won't be anywhere near as good and in this case there is a very high risk of serious injury.

If you have boundary hedges though are you 100% you want them removed? I'd start with a trim to lower the height and get them in shape and see how it looks.
A nice full thick hedge is much nicer to look at than a bear hedge plus great for wildlife.

Thanks everyone for your advice. We really do need them gone as they are too big to cut to a reasonable size without going into the brown heart of them. The boundaries aren't an issue as they're adjoining family fields. We just don't have the 2k to spend on just the driveway, which is half the length of one of the side boundaries. We have 2 small kids in nursery so that's a months nursery bill just for the driveway.

Taking the branches off first is a really good way to approach in. Then an industrial chipper and a few skip seems the fastest way to get rid of the branches. @LeWifi you've given us some hope as we're in our forties too! And thank you for the weed suppression advice @notproofread, we actually have a ton of cardboard boxes so that's a great way to use them. The very tall ones worry me, I agree with all the working at height concerns @QuestionForHelp, it might be a case if getting someone to cut them half to size with a tractor from the field first.

I would avoid the temptation to use old carpet on the weeds - unless it’s absolutely definitely 100% wool it will degrade leaving bits of plastic in the ground forever. Cardboard is great though.

I agree with the comments above - even if you DIY, getting rid of those conifers is not going to be free and is going to take a massive amount of time and work. What are your long term plans for the house? It’s likely to be worth borrowing a couple of £k to get them done professionally and quickly whether you plan to live there or sell it.

One good thing- properly seasoned leylandii burns really well and with that many trees you’re unlikely to need to buy wood for your stove, if you’ve got one. We had 5 giant leylandii down and the wood took 2 years to fully season and we’ve been burning it every every winter for 5 years and there’s still some left.

Was the garden loved once? Well maintained and full of nice things?
If so, don’t just get rid of everything. There will be good shrubs and plants that will shine again once the weeds have gone. I would get in someone professional who knows about plants to make it look good again (get a gardener - not a “landscaper” who will just scrape it back to bare earth). A mature garden is a valuable asset.

Are you moving into the house or selling it?

if you take them down yourselves you will be able to get rid of the bigger branches/trunks for free . Either just leave them at the end of the drive and put free wood or a post on facebook market place and they will be gone in a flash.

Do you know anyone with a chainsaw ? Conifers are easy going for a sharp saw.

If your going to have a go at taking them down and don’t fancy a chainsaw then I’d recommend one of these, I’ve taken conifers down with one and they are well worth the money. They cut on the pull stroke ,just don’t get it anywhere near your hands as they will cut to the bone.

https://www.radmoretucker.co.uk/shop/forestry-landscaping-equipment/silky-saws/silky-sheathed-saws/silky-zubat-saw-330mm/

Agree with others about keeping or giving away the wood. If it goes into skips it will just get dumped. Also skip hire is very expensive IME.

You haven't said whether or not you are moving in, but if you are keeping the place I would focus on getting the garden back into shape first. The nesting season has started in any case (if you are in the UK), so it would be illegal to remove them until after the summer, as a PP said.

I would get another couple of quotes from other companies and ask each for different scenarios (e.g. taking whole tree down, reducing tree, not chipping etc (if you did this yourself you could keep the mulch to weigh down your cardboard weed suppression)).

£2K does seem excessive, especially if you can do some aspects yourself. Also are there nearby forestry companies that might be interested in taking down the trees if they can keep the wood?

I think we have recently been quoted about a £100 an hour, maybe £140, for several tree surgeons and a chipper, all in.