Have you ever had a client throw a pebble on the lawn and tell you that this is where the new patio should go?
Perhaps a wave of an arm in the air, pointing in the general direction of an area in the distance and intimated that this needs clearing?
I once remember one of our employees cut down a liquidambar sapling which was hidden in an overgrown area because we'd not been told it was there.
2,000 trees planted in North Yorkshire to mark the Queen's jubilee felled by accident
THOUSANDS of trees planted in a North Yorkshire ravine to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee will have to be replanted later this year after a council worker accidentally chopped them down.
Bilton Conservation Group spent 200 hours planting 2,000 saplings at Nidd Gorge, near Knaresborough, to create a Diamond Jubilee Wood. but discovered only two oak trees still standing when they paid the land a visit. It has emerged that a Harrogate Borough Council lawnmower contractor had made the mistake, with the group’s chairman Keith Wilkinson saying the workman had “turned left instead of right”.
Read the report here: http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/10562322.2_000_trees_planted_in_North_Yorkshire_to_mark_the_Queen_s_jubilee_felled_by_accident/
Do we denigrate the contractor responsible for cutting down 2,000 trees at Nidd Gorge, near Knaresborough or is it the fault of the council for not making the job specification clear?
We can speculate on what really happen but this incident was avoidable if the contractor and the client (in this case Harrogate Borough Council) had met on site and discussed the job.
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we have to ask what kind of lawn mower he was driving?
but yes, i often get led around a garden by an over enthusiastic client who is telling me things far quicker than i can get them written down, and if anyone thinks their memory is that good, then i'd suggest they are being over confident. a proper discussion and proper notes are essential, a one way lest reeled off is the makings for problems later on.
one notable example was a patio near the pond where i ended up doing an additional 5msq of paving for nothing because of a miscommunication (my notes were fine, but the client was certain he was right) if i had spray painted what we had agreed on the first visit, there would have been no problem.
This is a good point. Even after proving a detailed written estimate or quote, I have always 'pegged out' the proposed areas before getting the spade out. When building walls, I will get the client involved at 2/3's height. Many requested '3ft' walls have ended up a course or so lower. Paving samples are also very important, with a 'dry lay' example.
It's all part of the job to ensure the client is happy and our lives run as smoothly as possible.
Having seen most Jubilee woods recently - they all seem to have been 18inch tree whips, and no one is maintaining them propertly so the grass is all 1.5m high..... So quite easy to miss when you take a tractor through it.
That was my thought David.
How has this investment in trees become so overgrown that the weed and the trees are in such competition that the trees are not easily identifiable?
David Cox said:
Because the planting is high profile, no shortage of volunteers, but the grind of routine maintenance has no kudos attached so resources and or volunteers evaporate.
I took on a churchyard maintenance contract about 18 years ago. They had tried DIY the previous year and for the first cut had 15 parishioners with their own strimmers and mowers and did the job in less than an hour,...as you will guess by the end of May it was down to just 2 parishioners spending the whole of every other Saturday on the job.
Ongoing maintenance will always be poor relation, because if well done it is invisible and noticeable only by its absence.
That's the problem with getting everyone involved, at the beginning it's all about working together and community feeling and then when the grunt work comes in everyone melts away with excuses. I've seen it time and time again with this sort of over hyped TV publicised event.
I had a client who wanted her shrubs/hedge cut down to a 6' high, so I did just that and then she came back and said I had cut too much off.
When I explained that the fence was 6' high and I had actually cut them to just over the fence height so she couldn't see it, she then told me that she thought the fence was only 4' high!
These things are often very much a scion of the trajedy of the commons - In this case the feel good resource and kudos is taken by everyone who can get involved - but non is available long term, so unless a dedicated paid for resource is set aside, or very well informed and eager volunteers available, these sorts of projects simply fail as soon as they get going.