← All guides · Reduction & renovation · September 2026

Overgrown hedge: DIY reduction or call a professional?

An overgrown Leylandii or laurel screen that's got away from a garden is one of the most common jobs I quote for around Goodnestone, usually on the newer plots rather than the older cottage gardens. Some of it is genuinely DIY territory. Some of it isn't. Here's the honest trade-off.

The decision: hire a pair of long-reach hedge trimmers, or call someone in

Pros of doing it yourself

• Cheaper, obviously, if the hedge is within reach of a domestic long-reach trimmer or a stepladder used safely, there's no reason to pay someone for a job you can do.
• You can go at your own pace, useful for a hedge that needs a genuinely staged reduction over more than one season, where rushing it in a single visit isn't actually the goal anyway.
• You get to know the hedge properly, which side is thin, where it's died back before, which is useful knowledge for future maintenance either way.

Cons of doing it yourself

• Height and reach are the real limiter. Most domestic kit tops out around 2 to 3 metres of genuine safe working height, and a lot of overgrown boundary hedges around here are taller than that, meaning a ladder, and ladder work on an uneven lawn or border edge is where most garden accidents actually happen.
• Getting the stage wrong on Leylandii is a real, expensive mistake, cut back into bare brown wood in one go and it will not regenerate on that face, ever, leaving a permanently patchy hedge. A professional reduction is staged over one to three visits precisely to avoid this.
• Disposal is a genuine hassle, a full skip's worth of hedge trimmings from a serious reduction doesn't fit in a green bin, and a trip to the tip with a trailer eats most of a free afternoon.
• If the hedge is near a listed building or has grown tree-sized stems, the section-211 paperwork question applies whether you do the physical work yourself or not, and that's easy to miss if you're focused on the cutting.

Pros of calling a professional

• The reduction gets staged correctly for the species, avoiding the bare-wood dieback that ruins a DIY attempt on Leylandii or old laurel.
• All arisings get cleared as part of the job, no trailer trip, no skip hire.
• The paperwork question (section-211 notice, if it applies) gets checked and handled as part of the quote, rather than being an afterthought.
• It's simply safer for anything above comfortable ladder height.

Cons of calling a professional

• Costs more than a DIY afternoon, obviously, a full staged reduction on an overgrown screen typically runs £300 to £900 depending on length and how many visits it needs.
• You're on someone else's schedule rather than doing it the free weekend you happen to have.

How to actually decide

If the hedge is under about 2.5 metres, in reasonable health, and reachable from level ground or a stepladder used sensibly, DIY with the right tool is a fair call. Once you're looking at ladder work above that height, or a hedge that's clearly been left for several years and needs staging to avoid dieback, the cost of getting it wrong (a permanently patchy hedge, or a fall) outweighs the saving. That's the honest line, not "always call a professional" and not "always DIY it."

What can go wrong

The DIY mistake I see most is a single hard cut on Leylandii that looks fine for a week and then goes visibly brown and patchy on that face within a season, by which point the only real fix is a much longer staged regrowth or, in a bad case, replacement. The professional-quote mistake is not asking whether the job genuinely needs staging over multiple visits, a rushed single-visit "reduction" on a badly overgrown hedge has the same dieback risk as a DIY attempt, hiring someone doesn't automatically avoid it.

Sources: RHS, hedge trimming and renovation guidance; Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, section 1; Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 211.