Straight tops, tight sides, clean bases, hedge work that actually looks like it's been shaped, not attacked. Formal trims, annual reductions and full cut-backs for garden and boundary hedges across the Highlands.
15+ Years
Combined experience
MyBuilder
Verified profile
Homes & Commercial
Restaurants, hotels, gyms
6am – 8pm
7 days a week
Highlands-wide
Inverness & surrounding
Cutting garden and boundary hedges to a clean, geometric finish with proper string lines and levels, plus height reductions, width thinning, base clearance and full removal of all cuttings.
Homeowners who want a formal hedge that stays sharp, landlords wanting overgrown boundaries brought back into shape between tenants, and commercial premises needing tidy frontages before the season opens.
Most formal hedges want one cut in early summer (June) and another in late summer (August–September). Fast-growing conifers like leylandii can need three cuts a year. Deciduous hedges like beech and hornbeam are ideally trimmed in late summer once new growth has hardened.
Cutting the wrong species at the wrong time, or reducing a hedge too hard in one go, can kill sections that never recover. Knowing where the green wood ends and the dead centre begins is the difference between a hedge that thickens up and one that goes bald.
Trimming only the top and sides year after year lets the base thin out. Once light stops reaching the bottom, that lower section rarely fills back in, you're left with an ugly, leggy hedge.
Cutting a mature conifer back too far, into old brown wood, will not regrow. Reductions need to be phased across seasons or the hedge is finished on that face.
A boundary hedge left one season too long can steal an hour of afternoon sun from the garden, block a window, or overhang a pavement, and neighbours notice.
Levels and string lines produce a finish that looks intentional, sharp, geometric, professional. Not the eyeballed wobble you get from most weekend jobs.
Correct timing and cut depth encourages the hedge to break new buds inside the canopy, thickening rather than thinning over years.
Phased reductions, base clearance and correct-season cutting keep a hedge productive for decades. Bad cutting shortens its useful life by half.
Slightly-tapered sides (wider at the base, narrower at the top) hold privacy while still letting light down into the garden below.
Petrol trimmers for laurel and leylandii, sharper blades for beech and hornbeam, loppers for anything gone woody, matched to the hedge, not one-size-fits-all.
Bagged, loaded, gone. You never end up with a compost heap the size of a car parked behind the shed.
We identify the hedge, assess condition and agree what's realistic, a light shape, a heavier reduction, or a phased plan across two seasons.
Tarps laid to catch cuttings so they don't get shredded into the lawn or beds, makes clearance quick and clean.
For any formal hedge we run string lines top and side so the finish is genuinely straight, not just 'straight-ish'.
Tops levelled, sides tapered slightly inward at the top (so light reaches the base), bases cleared of encroaching weeds and low growth.
All cuttings gathered, hedge base swept clean, everything loaded into the van and taken away.
Leylandii, Lawson cypress and other conifers, fast growers that need two or three cuts a year and must never be reduced into brown wood. Beech and hornbeam, deciduous but hold coppery leaves through winter; best cut once, in late summer. Laurel, bulletproof, tolerates hard reductions, cut with loppers rather than a trimmer to avoid shredded leaves. Privet, box, yew, escallonia and holly, all handled routinely, each with slightly different rules.
Any reduction of more than 30% of a hedge's height should be phased across two seasons, take one face this year, the other next. Trying to do it all at once, especially on old conifers, will kill the reduced face. We'll always tell you if a reduction you want is realistic and, if not, what a two-year plan would look like.
Every long-lived hedge is slightly tapered, wider at the base than the top. Cut a hedge with vertical sides and the top shades out the bottom, which slowly goes bare. A 5–10 degree inward taper on each side keeps light on the lower branches and holds the density over the years.
Most garden hedges we handle from ground level or a stable platform. For very tall boundary hedges we assess access and either use appropriate platform equipment or, occasionally, refer specialist work to tree surgeons better equipped for full climbing operations. We won't cut a hedge from an unsafe position just to save a callout.
Most customers move to an annual or twice-annual programme after the first trim, because pricing and scheduling both get easier. You know what date the hedge will be cut and roughly what it'll cost. New customers can start with a single trim and decide from there, no obligation to commit.
Straight answers on cost, timing, materials and what happens after the job's done. Anything else, call 07398 794085.
Send us a photo of the hedge and rough dimensions and we'll come back with a fixed price. No obligation, no hourly rates.
Free quotes · No obligation · Cash or bank transfer · 6am–8pm, 7 days
