For fields and plots that have got away from you – brambles, scrub, bracken, fallen timber – and for ditches that have silted up and stopped carrying water. Getting both done by machine turns months of hand work into a few days.
Land clearance starts with cutting down what is growing. Brambles, gorse and young scrub can be mulched with a heavy flail or forestry mulcher; bigger stems are felled and either chipped, stacked or burnt where allowed. An excavator with a grab or rake then pulls out stumps, roots, old wire and rubbish.
Ditch clearance is usually done with an excavator fitted with a wide ditching bucket, working from the bank. The contractor lifts out silt and vegetation, restores the original profile and fall, and spreads or piles the spoil along the bank. Blocked culverts and pipes under gateways are often part of the same job.
Most clearance jobs end with the ground rough and bare. Say at the start if you want it levelled, cultivated or reseeded afterwards, so the contractor can plan the right machines.
Clearing scrub and hedgerow-type vegetation is best done between autumn and late winter, outside the bird nesting season. Birds nest in brambles and scrub as well as hedges, and damaging an active nest is an offence at any time of year.
Ditches are easiest to clear in late summer and early autumn when water levels are at their lowest and the banks are firm enough to carry an excavator. Clearing just before the autumn rains means the ditch is working when you need it.
Booked through us: £3,000, £22,000. Real jobs and what they came to — every field is different, so treat these as what past work cost, not a price for yours.