Your gardener in Worcester and the villages around the city

Worcester is the one place on the round where I ask what the soil is doing before I say anything else, because it changes street by street. The bedrock under the city is Mercia Mudstone — the heavy, sticky red clay that turns to plasticine in a wet February and sets hard in an August dry spell. But the Severn has laid down terraces of sand and gravel either side of itself over a very long time, and where a garden sits on one of those, the topsoil is light and full of small pebbles instead. Two gardens on the same road can want opposite things.

It matters more than it sounds. On the clay, cutting a lawn while the ground is still soft leaves ruts that last all season, and anything planted in a hole that holds water sulks. On the gravel, the same lawn dries out and goes straw-coloured weeks before its neighbour does. Same weather, same street, different job.

West of the river — St John's, Lower Wick and Powick

St John's sits across the Severn from the city centre, and the gardens run from small walled yards near the main road out to proper lawns as you go west. Powick and the lanes towards it are more open, with hedges that do most of the growing in one long push through May and June.

North — Barbourne, Northwick and Claines

The northern edge of the city is where mature gardens are commonest: long back plots, established hedges and a good deal of shade from trees that were there first. Shaded lawn is its own job — it grows thin rather than fast, and it wants cutting higher than a sunny one, not oftener.

South and east — Battenhall, Diglis, Warndon and Kempsey

Battenhall and Diglis run down toward the river and the canal, and Kempsey carries on south into open country. Warndon is on the other side of the city, drier and more exposed. Between them they cover most of what a garden can be asked to do here, from a courtyard that needs half an hour to a lawn that takes the best part of a morning.

What I do here

The regular round is the heart of it — mowing, edges, weeding, deadheading and light pruning, whatever the garden needs that visit. One-off work as well: overgrown gardens brought back, a single cut with the edges done properly, hedges trimmed with the clippings bagged. Paths, patios and yards are swept and cleared by hand.

My lawn is heavy clay and cuts up badly in winter — what can be done?

Stay off it while it is soft, and cut higher when it dries. Most Worcester clay lawns are fixed by timing rather than by treatment: mowing at the right moment leaves no ruts, and the grass thickens on its own once the ground firms up.

Next door's garden is sandy and mine is clay. How can that be?

Quite likely, yes. The bedrock under the city is red clay, but the Severn has laid sand and gravel over it in bands — so one garden sits on the terrace and the one beside it sits on the clay. It changes what each lawn wants in a dry summer.

Looking for a gardener in St John's or Kempsey — not just the city centre?

Both — the city and the villages around it are the same round and the same price.