Prestige Property

Prestige Property – Wiswell

One of my clients in Wiswell, Clitheroe, Ribble Valley became the custodians of this prestige property in early 2021. The gardens were initially designed and planted by Fred Loads a well-known gardener in the early 1960s also popular on the BBC Radio 4 programme, Gardeners Question Time. As usual, since the garden design installation, multiple custodians of the property have altered the garden to suit their tastes and lifestyle. The last custodian, unfortunately, let the grounds become overgrown in the time the property was up for sale.

This is quite common Clives Gardening Services find with properties of all sizes.

Roll forward to April 2021 when Clive was contacted and had a consultation with the client.

The now custodians are a busy family running a successful business and have a large family, a plan was made to bring the back garden into lower maintenance outside space, so the families downtime could be spent enjoying quality time in the garden.

May 5th, 2021, was the first visit to the property for CGS to start bringing the property back into line. The rear garden was to be the priority and challenge for the gardener.

As one visitor to the property once quoted to me:

There is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.

A quote by the late Desmond Tutu

As a gardening company, Clive’s Gardening Services reflect the garden as the elephant and on arrival, I am always ready to take the first bite. CGS doesn’t start sections all over the place and leaves them unfinished. CGS complete one section at a time so progress can be seen by the client.

Clive’s Gardening Services would love to spend all their time on the actual project. Days on site do get used up with fortnightly garden maintenance. Planting seasonal plants and bulbs, borders, troughs, tubs and hanging baskets. Leaf management and winter tidy ups, when doing a winter tidy up at this property an 8-ton skip is soon filled up in no time with leaves and Larch needles.

Due to the lack of grounds maintenance, CGS has been bringing in Tree Surgeon teams, 4 men strong, and they also have spent multi-days on-site removing their own green waste after doing their own specialised work.

Tree surgeons chipping green waste

Boundaries were either post and rail fencing which was mainly rotten or mixed hedging which was low and full of gaps. Nosy walkers had a tendency to look into the property whilst walking past. Neither boundary solutions were good for privacy or security for a prestigious property. CGS sourced teams of sub-contractors to do clearance work, tree removal and stump grinding, and also a set of fencers to supply and install just under 300m of fencing around the four boundaries of the property to make the grounds secure and private.

Since arriving on site in May 2021 CGS has been using between four and six skips a month for green waste. After being here about 7 months that is just starting to slow down, in 2022 that will reduce down to two to four skips a month in the first third of the year.

Once the garden is baselined we hope to install a composting system to cope with general maintenance.

The grounds of this property are believed to be one and two acres if you live in a property where the garden is overgrown or are about to move in a property new to you contact Clives Garden Services to discuss your requirements.

This has been Clives Gardening Services largest project so far. If you have recently moved into a prestige property, or you want your gardens bringing back into line please contact Clive to arrange an onsite consultation.

First cut of the back lawn

With the present custodians of the property having 5 boys of various ages, the back lawn is always a cross between a football pitch and a park with all the toys. After the first cut, it soon became apparent that the 21” Honda mower wasn’t really the ideal mower for the terrain of this lawn and a couple of other large lawns Clive’s Gardening Services had recently taken on.

First cut of the back lawn

Our first visit on site was the 5th of May due to workload Clives Gardening Services didn’t get back to the site next until the 4th of June. The Honda 536HRH had been sold to a friend in Northampton and the new Toro had arrived it is a wider deck so that equates to quicker cutting times.