Brush clearing, blackberry removal and chipping

Blackberry is the reason most of these calls happen. It grows faster than anything else in this valley, it roots wherever a cane touches the ground, and by the time it has been left two seasons it is a wall rather than a patch. Cutting the top off achieves nothing lasting. What actually works is taking it out properly, getting the crowns where the canes come from, and then keeping on top of the ground afterwards.

Most brush clearing jobs are a mix. Blackberry and ivy, scrub willow and volunteer saplings that came up where nobody was looking, old fence line growth, ornamental shrubs that have turned into trees, and usually a quantity of material somebody piled up years ago and never dealt with. It all comes out together, and everything that will go through a chipper does.

How we work depends on the ground. On open ground and a straightforward property we can clear a large area quickly. Where the brush is growing through a fence, round a septic lid, over a well head or into a neighbour's boundary, it becomes hand work and it takes longer. We look at that at the estimate and tell you which one you have, because the two are genuinely different jobs.

Clearing brush usually uncovers things. Old wire, fence posts, concrete, a dumped mattress, the edge of a bed nobody has seen for years. We will tell you at the estimate that this is likely, and we deal with what we find as we go rather than working round it. Tree and yard debris leaves with us as part of the job.

What you are left with is bare, workable ground, and that is the point at which most people decide what they actually want there. Quite often the same visit turns into bark and a bed, a new fence line where the old one was buried, or lawn seed where it was scrub. We can do all of that, and it is usually far less effort and disruption to do it while the crew and the trailer are already there. Estimates are free and happen at the property.

Blackberry comes back, and we will not pretend otherwise. What we clear is gone, and the ground round it is full of seed and of root that will push again given a season of nobody looking. Staying on top of it afterwards is either something you do or something you have us do on a maintenance visit, and either is fine, but the honest version is that one clearance is a reset rather than a cure.

Access decides a lot of these jobs too. Where the trailer and the chipper can get close, a big area of brush clears fast. Where everything has to come out through a side gate by hand, the same volume is a much longer day. We look at that at the estimate and quote what your property actually is, so there is no conversation halfway through about the job being bigger than it looked.