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The outside is half the home.

Gardening and outdoor maintenance across Godmanchester, Huntingdon and the Cambridgeshire villages. A garden is not separate from the house; it is the room without a ceiling, and the place a home does most of its breathing. It greets you home every evening and greets your guests before you do. Like every room, it rewards regular, unhurried care far more than the occasional heroic blitz. Underneath the name it is the Room Refresh idea taken outdoors: brought back into shape once, then kept in rhythm.

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Fully insured DBS checked Fixed price in writing Green waste handled responsibly All seasons, all weathers

What we do outside

From the front gate to the back fence

Regular gardening, seasonal upkeep and the outdoor jobs that keep the fabric of your home sound. A sample, not a limit:

Lawns mown, edged and fed through the season
Hedges trimmed and kept in shape, at the right time of year
Planting schemes designed and planted for year-round interest
Borders weeded, mulched, edged and carefully tended
Companion planting that lets the garden help itself
Pruning, shaping and preventative care, so plants flourish rather than merely survive
Minor tree work: young trees, small limbs, crown lifting
Pergolas, arches and garden structures custom built to fit the space
Fences repaired where they can be, replaced where they should be
Spring and autumn tidy-ups, leaves cleared before they smother the lawn
Patios, paths and decking cleaned and made safe underfoot
Gutters, fascias and downpipes cleared before winter
Sheds re-felted, repaired and made weathertight
Garden furniture cleaned, oiled and put to bed for winter
Planters built and planted, water butts and composters installed
The one-off clearance job you have been putting off: try us

Our approach

A garden kept, not conquered

Rhythm beats blitz

Little and often is how gardens stay lovely. A regular visit keeps everything a small job, which is cheaper, calmer and far better for the garden than an annual rescue mission.

Seasons set the schedule

Hedges are cut when the birds allow, roses pruned when the frost decides, gutters cleared before the rain arrives. We work to the garden's calendar, not just ours, and we have written the whole year down if you would rather do it yourself.

We know our limits

Minor tree work we do ourselves. Large or hazardous tree work belongs with a qualified tree surgeon, and we keep one in our network of trusted tradespeople, alongside an electrician, a Gas Safe engineer and others we would happily let loose on our own home. One conversation, the right hands on every job.

Planting & borders

Gardens that flourish, not merely survive

A border is a small community, and like any community it does better when its members are chosen to get along. We plan planting schemes around companion planting and the old wisdom of right plant, right place: species that shade, feed and protect one another, so the garden does half the work itself and asks less of chemicals and luck.

Then comes the part most gardens never get: proper, ongoing attention. Pruning at the right moment rather than the convenient one. Shaping that respects how a plant wants to grow. Preventative interventions, the quiet snip and the early feed, made before problems take hold rather than after they show. It is stewardship applied to living things, and it is the difference between a garden that survives and one that looks beautiful in every season.

And it is drawn before it is dug. A border is easy to fill and hard to fill well, so we plan it on paper first: what goes where, what comes up when, and what it looks like from the kitchen window in February as well as in June. That is not a design service with a fee attached. It is simply how we would want it done in our own garden, and it comes with the work.

Below is a border made from nothing: a line marked on a tired lawn, the turf lifted, the soil improved, and then several seasons of patient attention. Gardens are the one part of a home that improve entirely by being looked after.

A lawn marked out with sand lines beside a bay window, before a new border is cut — A line marked on the lawn. Every border starts as an argument about shape.

A newly dug garden border with turf lifted and soil turned over, a spade standing in the ground — Turf lifted, soil turned and improved. The part nobody photographs.

Pink tulips in flower in front of ornamental grasses and fresh spring growth in a garden border — The first spring. Bulbs go in long before anyone sees the point.

Deep pink dahlias in full bloom in a well-tended garden border — Dahlias at their peak: staked, fed and deadheaded in season.

Agapanthus and yellow lilies flowering together in a densely planted summer border — Agapanthus and lilies, chosen to flower in turn rather than all at once.

A mixed cottage-garden border of white and pink perennials growing through evergreen shrubs — Cottage planting: several species sharing the same ground happily.

A white and green planting scheme with roses and perennials beside a garden path — A quieter, mostly white scheme that carries into the evening.

A kitchen garden bed of broad beans supported by canes and string in early summer — The kitchen garden, supported and tied in before it needs it.

An established garden with mature shrubs, shaped evergreens and a clipped lawn edge — Years of small, timely interventions look like this.

Built for the space

Pergolas and structures, made to fit

Off-the-shelf structures fit the packet, not the garden. We design and build pergolas, arches and garden woodwork to suit your space, your planting and the way you actually use the garden, drawing on the same care as our joinery and restoration work. Here is one, from the pencil drawing to the first evening spent under it.

And new for spring: outdoor kitchens, which we are designing, building and pricing properly over the winter before we sell a single one.

A hand-drawn pergola plan in pencil on paper, marked with dimensions of 2.4 metres and 40 centimetres — Where it begins. Measured, drawn by hand, agreed before anything is cut.

The bare corner of a garden before work, with a fence, a wheelbarrow and cleared ground — Before: the corner cleared and the tree canopy raised. Lifting it exposed a broken fence panel behind, which was repaired before anything else went in.

Lengths of structural timber delivered and stacked on a patio ready for a pergola build — Timber delivered, sorted and set out.

Pergola posts and head timbers standing in a garden with a trestle, ladder and wheelbarrow alongside — Posts in, heads on. The shape of the thing arrives.

The completed timber frame of a garden pergola with a stepladder and tools alongside — Braced and squared against the boundary.

Timber deck joists set out on the ground beneath a pergola frame, ready to be levelled and fixed — Deck joists set out. Levels checked before a board goes down.

Decking boards being laid on the sub-frame under a finished pergola structure — Boards laid to the shape of the space, not to a rectangle.

A completed timber pergola and deck in a garden, seen in daylight against a fence and planting — After: decking cut to fit the awkward angles rather than boxing them off, the pergola sized to the corner, and the planting kept.

The finished pergola at dusk, lit with festoon lights above a corner sofa on the new deck — The part that matters: the first evening spent under it.

Stewardship, outdoors

The house outside, not only the garden

The fabric as well as the borders. Fascias, bargeboards and soffits repaired in timber and repainted. Sills and window frames mended rather than ripped out. Gutters re-levelled, downpipes re-fixed, joints remade. Render patched, brickwork and garden walls repointed, coping stones re-bedded. Gates and railings rubbed down and painted. Paving lifted where it rocks, joints weeded and repointed, paths washed down carefully rather than blasted. Sheds repaired and treated. All of it carries a guide price.

The garden is where neglect shows first

Timber weathers, gutters fill, moss creeps across the path. None of it is dramatic, and that is exactly the danger: outdoor problems announce themselves quietly, then invoice loudly. A blocked gutter becomes damp in a bedroom wall. An untreated fence post becomes a leaning fence, then a flattened one, usually in the same storm.

Our outdoor work follows the same principle as everything else we do: notice early, act small, and keep what already exists in good heart. A well-kept garden tells the same story as a well-kept house, of continuous care rather than repeated rescue.

Fence and gate repairs sit close to our joinery and restoration work, and outdoor checks are built into every home care plan, so the outside is never an afterthought.

What this usually costs

A lawn cut and edge is around £95 a visit, hedge trimming from £205 a session, and a full seasonal tidy-up about £530. Planting schemes for a small bed start near £520 plus plants. Custom pergolas begin around £1,700 and are priced to the design.

Or just the one thing

These are starting points, not a menu. Combine them, split them, or ask for the one job you actually want. If that is a single curtain pole, send us that one line and a single curtain pole is all we will price.

Before you go

Four more things

Timber, kept, beats plastic, capped. The quickest quote you will ever get for tired fascias is to screw uPVC over the top of them. It is quick precisely because it hides everything, including the wet timber you were worried about, which then rots on quietly behind a surface nobody will ever look at again. Sound timber can be cut back, spliced, primed and painted, and it will outlive the plastic that would have covered it. Where boards really have gone, we replace in timber and paint it properly.

The same argument goes for a window that sticks, a sill with one soft corner, a gate that has dropped, and a garden wall with a few loose bricks. Almost none of it needs replacing. Most of it needs somebody to spend an afternoon on it before another winter goes through, and a surprising amount of inside damp starts with a gutter out here.

We will not cut a hedge in nesting season. Between March and August, if birds are in it, that hedge waits. The law takes a dim view and so do we. The garden will not suffer for two months, and there is almost always something more useful to do with the same visit.

The garden is where a house breathes out. Prana means breath, and a garden is the part of a home that changes most obviously with the seasons. Kept in rhythm it looks after itself for most of the year. Left to a single annual rescue it never quite recovers its shape.

Gardens do not stay done. A garden brought back into shape once will drift out of it again within a season, which is why we would rather visit four times a year than heroically once. That is what a care plan is, and it is cheaper than the annual rescue.

Garden getting away from you?

Tell us what is out there and send a photo or two. Regular garden visits we can price from that. For a bigger job, a build or a planting scheme we will come and walk the garden with you first, then price it in writing.

Get a written price