A maintenance visit is not one job. Houses, communal gardens, hotels, offices, schools, colleges and housing associations all ask for a round, and the list changes with the month.
The useful conversation is which of those jobs you need every visit, and which are seasonal. A cut and tidy is a different diary entry from a site that also wants beds, gutters and a jet wash.
The regular list
These are the jobs the team is usually booked for, either on a round or as a one-off.
- Weed control on borders and hard surfaces, by hand or with a treatment
- Lawn cutting, treatments, aeration and scarifying
- Composting and seasonal bedding
- Pruning, hedge trimming and leaf clearance
- Gutter clearance and litter picking
- Jet washing of paving
- Fence panel painting
- A one-off garden clearance and rubbish removal when a plot has been left
When the garden was built by the same team
Some of the designed gardens stay on a monthly visit after the build. The Readshaw garden in St Albans is one: patio, lawn, planting and gravel, then a maintenance visit so the curves do not disappear under the first season of growth.
Tree work on a grounds round is arranged with the surgery team rather than squeezed into a mowing slot. Felling and stump removal need their own visit.