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Ivy and garden clearance go together naturally, because a garden that has been left long enough to need clearing has almost always been left long enough for ivy to have got established somewhere.
Why It Is Cheaper Done Together
Most of the cost of any ivy job is not the ivy. It is getting a team, a vehicle and a means of removing the material to your address, plus setting up access. On a clearance all of that is already happening, so the ivy is close to just its own labour.
The waste element in particular overlaps almost completely. Ivy is bulky and wet and a real part of a standalone quotation; inside a clearance that is already filling a vehicle, it is marginal.
The Sequencing Question
There is one genuine complication, and it is worth understanding because it affects how the job is booked.
Ivy on a building is best severed, left for a few weeks, then cleared. A clearance is usually wanted in one go. Those two requirements pull in opposite directions, and the usual answer is to sever the ivy at the start of the clearance and return for the wall later — which is a short second visit rather than a whole job.
Ivy on the ground, on fences and in trees has no such constraint and is dealt with within the clearance itself.
The Order of Work
- Sever any ivy on the building on day one, so the die-back clock starts immediately
- Cut ivy out of trees while the team is dealing with the tree work, if there is any — this is where the biggest saving sits, because the climb is already happening
- Clear ground ivy as part of the general clearance
- Take ivy off fences, and establish at that point whether the fence is sound, because it often is not
- Grub out the root crowns while the ground is open and visible, which is much easier during a clearance than afterwards
- Return for the building once the die-back has happened
What Gets Found
Clearing ivy during a clearance is usually where the surprises are, and they are worth expecting rather than being alarmed by:
- Fences that were being held up rather than damaged
- Mortar that needs repointing, which was a problem before the ivy and not because of it
- A shed roof that has been taking water under a lifted felt edge
- Blocked airbricks, gutters and drains
- Trees with defects that were hidden under the growth
We would rather point these out as they appear than have somebody conclude the clearance caused them.
What to Agree Beforehand
On a garden that has been left a long time, ivy is often the only thing providing cover and structure, and clearing all of it at once can leave a plot looking starker than anybody expected. It is worth agreeing which ivy is going and which is staying before the day — and, where there is a lot of it, whether the nesting season makes staging the work the better plan.
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Ask Us About Your Own Garden
If a garden is being cleared and there is ivy on the house, the fence or the trees, say so at the quotation. Sequencing it into the clearance is much cheaper than coming back for it.
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