Your gardener in Stroud and the five valleys

Stroud sits near the western edge of the Cotswolds, where five valleys meet. That single fact decides most of the garden work here. Where the hillsides are steep, houses were built on terraces of drystone retaining walls holding up both the house and the garden — so a typical Stroud plot is a set of narrow level shelves reached by steps, not one open lawn. Out west past Stonehouse the ground flattens and turns to clay, and the job changes completely. I take both, and I'd rather tell you which one you've got than pretend there's a standard Stroud garden.

The rock here is layered by height rather than by village: limestone on the tops, clay down in the vale, with bands in between. A single street can run from thin, free-draining brash at the top to heavy ground at the bottom.

Painswick, Slad and Sheepscombe — the northern valleys

Painswick stands on the spur dividing the Painswick and Slad valleys, so one garden can fall away steeply on one side while its neighbour across the ridge gets a wholly different amount of sun. The village itself sits on Midford Sand; the Inferior Oolite that gave Painswick its building stone forms the hills above. Slad runs along its own narrow, steep-sided brook valley, and Sheepscombe is tucked behind the scarp, awkward enough to reach that access is worth mentioning when you call.

The Golden Valley — Chalford, Bisley, Eastcombe and Brimscombe

The steepest, narrowest ground around Stroud, and the most interesting to work. Settlement went on the hillsides rather than the valley floors: Chalford's weavers' cottages cling to the slope on paths so narrow that groceries went up by donkey into the 1950s, and a few of these gardens are still reached only on foot. Bisley sits at the head of the Toadsmoor valley, which drops some four miles from the church down to Brimscombe Port — where river, canal, road and railway all run side by side because the valley floor is too narrow to let them separate.

Minchinhampton, Rodborough and the Nailsworth valley

Two different jobs within a mile of each other. Up top, Minchinhampton and Rodborough Commons cap the plateau above 600 ft — open, grazed, wind-blown limestone grassland, and gardens up there dry hard in a dry June. Down in the valley, Nailsworth, Woodchester and Amberley sit in shelter on the wooded slopes. Cut a hedge at the right time of year and it earns its keep on the tops; a border that would sulk up there will do fine below.

Stonehouse, the Stanleys and the vale floor

West of Stroud the Frome stops cutting and starts spreading, and clay takes over — enough of it that Stonehouse dug its own for a brick and tile works from 1891 to 1968. This is the reverse of the hillside problem: ground that holds water, warms late, and compacts if you walk it at the wrong moment, so timing matters more here than drainage does above. The boundaries change with it. Up in the valleys it's drystone walls; down here it's hedges, ditches and brick, which means hedge lengths and edges rather than steps and terraces.

One thing worth knowing wherever you are on a slope: cold air runs downhill and pools at the bottom. A garden on the valley floor at Brimscombe can take a frost on a morning when a garden a couple of hundred feet up the same hillside doesn't. It's the usual reason two neighbours disagree about when it's safe to plant out.

North-west out of the valleys the ground opens into the Vale, and the Newent round starts — orchard country again, and a different set of problems to the clay.

If you're after a gardener in Stroud, Stonehouse or any of the valleys between, call 07443 797 834.

The garden is terraced up the valley side with steps between each level — can you work it?

Yes. Terraces held up by drystone walls are the normal shape of a Stroud hillside garden, not an unusual one. I bring kit that goes up and down steps and the green waste comes out by the bag. It takes longer than a flat garden of the same size, and that is the only difference.

There's a patch halfway down the slope that never dries out, even though the rest drains fast. What is that?

Almost always a spring line. The limestone here lets water through until it meets clay underneath, and then the water comes out sideways partway down the hill. It is why the old cottages sit in a row at that height. Grit and sand will not fix it — the answer is planting that likes wet feet, or a way of moving the water on.

Looking for a gardener in Stonehouse, or anywhere down on the flat?

Yes, and it is genuinely a different job from the valleys — heavy clay that holds water and warms up late in spring. Same round, same prices. The main thing is timing: walk clay at the wrong moment and you undo a season's work in an afternoon.