Garden upkeep
What comes back every month or every season, so the garden never turns into a building site.
The work that repeats
Mowing is the most frequent request: a full pass, strimmed edges along walls and beds, clippings collected and taken away. On a lawn kept up, the rhythm runs from weekly in spring to monthly in high summer. On a lawn left for three months, a rescue cut comes first — slower, higher, sometimes in two passes so the grass is not smothered under its own cuttings.
Trimming covers hedges, ornamental shrubs, fruit trees and light pruning of low branches reachable from the ground or a ladder. Around Toulouse, thuja, photinia and laurel hedges are cut in spring then again at the end of summer. The old rule still holds: you do not cut back into the old wood of a conifer, because it will not come back.
The rest of the family comes down to a few regular gestures: clearing brush from a plot or a patch of scrub, weeding beds and paths by hand or with a thermal weeder, collecting leaves in autumn, cleaning paths, scarifying and aerating the lawn in spring, feeding. It is these quiet visits that prevent the big rescue jobs two years later.
Upkeep: the practical side
How high should grass be cut in summer?
Higher than in spring, around seven to eight centimetres. Grass cut short in July burns off within days under the Toulouse sun and leaves room for weeds. Raising the cutting height and spacing the visits protects the lawn far better than any extra watering.
Can a shared hedge be cut on the neighbour's side?
From your own ground, trimming is free up to the boundary. Beyond it, the neighbour's agreement is needed to work on their face — a simple matter of courtesy, but it saves a good deal of friction. Tell me if that is the situation: it changes both the method and the time needed.
Is weeding done without chemicals?
Yes, mechanically or with a thermal weeder depending on the area and the soil. Synthetic weedkillers are banned for private use in France, and for good reason. The trade-off is that it has to be repeated more often: hand weeding holds for a few weeks, not a season.
How many metres of hedge?
Length, height and the date of the last cut: three figures are enough to plan the day.