Hedge cutting and hedge trimming.

Getting a hedge back under control.

Hedges only stay easy if they're cut regularly. Most garden hedges want one cut a year — usually late summer once nesting is over — while formal hedges like box and yew look best with two. Leave one for a few years and it thickens at the top, goes bare and woody at the bottom and starts taking light off the whole garden.

That's fixable. Deciduous hedges such as beech, hornbeam and hawthorn will take a hard reduction and grow back thicker. Conifers are less forgiving — leylandii won't reshoot from brown wood, so a big reduction has to be planned rather than just cut back to the fence line. I'll tell you what your hedge will tolerate before we agree a height.

It's an offence to disturb an active nest, so between March and August I'll check a hedge over before starting and reschedule that section if there's anything nesting in it.