If your garden has got away from you — grass gone to seed, a shed full of things nobody's opened in years, a corner where the cut branches from three summers ago are still sitting in a heap — garden clearance Derby households call on is usually less about landscaping and more about simply getting the debris off the plot so you can see what you're working with again. That's the job here: we load what's already cut, dismantled or bagged, carry it out, and sweep the area over so it's tidy rather than just emptier. It's the same crew and the same trucks that handle full property clearances, so if a garden job runs alongside clearing a garage, a shed, or even a basement clearance on the same visit, that's straightforward to arrange in one call rather than booking separate firms.

We're a family-run outfit based in Derby, and most of our garden work comes from people who've had a house clearance or a probate job done by us before and call again when the garden needs sorting too — or from a recommendation passed on by someone who has. That matters here, because a garden clearance is often the job that gets done just before a house goes on the market, or just after someone's passed away and the family are trying to get the property presentable. We treat it the same way either way: turn up when we said we would, do the work properly, and leave you with a garden you can actually use again.

At a Glance

• Licensed Waste Carrier, reference CBDU538050, fully insured for every job we do
• 20 years clearing Derby gardens, sheds and outbuildings - family-run, not a franchise
• Free, fixed-price quotes with no skip hire, no permits and no van runs for you to make

What a garden clearance in Derby actually covers

• Grass cuttings and general green waste already raked up or bagged
• Leaves from trees, and tree branches that have already been cut down
• Timber and logs, whether stacked, in a woodpile, or left over from previous tree work
• Plants and pots you no longer want, including old compost and empty planters
• General unwanted vegetation and shrubs that have already been cut back
• Dismantled old fencing panels, posts and any leftover timber products
• Old sheds, outbuildings and broken summer houses (see the note on dismantling below)
• Used garden furniture - benches, chairs, tables and similar
• Bricks, old used cement, rubble and bagged builder's waste left in the garden

Not Included / Costed Separately

• We don't cut lawns, trim hedges or prepare land - we clear loose waste, we don't do the gardening itself, so please have grass mown, hedges trimmed and trees felled before we arrive
• We won't cut down trees, shrubs or foliage on site - if it's still growing, that's a tree surgeon or gardener's job, not ours
• If a shed, summer house or fence panel needs dismantling or breaking down before it can be removed, that's charged as a surcharge to cover the extra tools, time and labour
• Anything hazardous or harmful to health is not something we'll remove under any circumstances
• Japanese knotweed and other invasive plants need specialist treatment and disposal under separate regulations - this isn't something a standard garden clearance covers, and we'll be upfront if that's what you're dealing with
• Loose, un-bagged debris costs more in labour time than the same waste bagged up beforehand - bagging what you can before we arrive keeps the price down

How a garden clearance day runs, from the first call to a swept-tidy plot

1. Tell us what's out there: A quick call or message describing the garden - an overgrown lawn's worth of cuttings, a collapsing shed, old fencing, a few pieces of furniture - is enough for us to work out what's involved and whether anything (like a shed that needs dismantling) is likely to carry a surcharge.
2. Get a free, fixed-price quote: For most garden jobs a photo or short video sent by WhatsApp or email is enough to price it accurately; for bigger or more overgrown plots, or where access is tight, we'll come out and look at the site in person. Either way the price we agree is the price you pay - no surprises added on the day.
3. We turn up with the right kit: Our team arrives with the truck, shovels, rakes, hand tools and heavy-duty waste disposal bags needed for the job, along with the proper protective gear - gloves, masks and steel toe-capped boots - because garden waste often hides broken glass, rusted metal or worse under the surface growth.
4. We load and clear: We load loose, already-cut material onto the van - grass cuttings, cut branches, dismantled fencing, old furniture and the rest. If a structure like a shed needs breaking down first, we'll have agreed that as part of the quote so there's no argument about it on the day.
5. We sweep up and hand it back: Once everything's loaded, we sweep the area over so you're left with a tidy, cleared plot rather than just a smaller pile of rubbish. If you can't be there, we can collect keys or access arrangements in advance and send you photos once the job's done.
6. You pay once you're happy: We don't take payment upfront. Once you've seen the finished garden and you're satisfied, that's when payment is taken - which is also why so much of our work comes from people calling us back for the next job.

What garden clearance costs in Derby

Nationally, cost guides such as Checkatrade, MyBuilder and PriceMyGarden put a typical UK garden clearance at somewhere between £200 and £600 for the whole job, with labour running roughly £45–£60 an hour or, for bigger jobs, priced by the load at around £210 per skip or van load - figures that tend to run higher in London and the South East than they do here in the East Midlands.

Where your job lands in that range depends mostly on volume and access: a small courtyard garden with a few bags of cuttings is at the bottom end, while a long-neglected back garden with a collapsing shed, old fencing and years of accumulated debris is towards the top. Structures that need dismantling before removal - a shed, a summer house, fence panels still fixed to posts - add a surcharge on top of the base clearance cost, because that's extra tools, time and labour rather than simply loading loose waste.

One thing genuinely worth doing if you want to keep the cost down: bag up loose debris and stack cut branches before we arrive. It sounds small, but the labour time difference between shovelling loose leaves and grass into bags on site versus loading pre-bagged waste is real, and it's reflected in the quote. Any garden furniture or planters with resale value gets factored into the price the same way it would on a house clearance - it's not usually a major offset on green waste jobs, but it's never ignored.

None of this replaces an actual quote: send us photos or a short video, or ask for a site visit if the garden's large, overgrown or access is awkward, and we'll give you a fixed figure before any work starts, not an estimate that changes once the truck's on site.

Garden clearance versus skip hire versus council collection

Michael's approach has never really changed over those twenty years: quote fairly, turn up when you said you would, and let the finished job speak for itself rather than a sales pitch. On a garden clearance that means being upfront about a dismantling surcharge before the work starts, not after, and it means the crew doesn't walk away once the van's full - they stay until the plot's actually swept and usable, not just emptier.

B. Grant, one of our customers, had us handle a clearance during a probate case and described how we collected keys and dealt with everything while she wasn't in the right frame of mind to be there herself - sympathetic, easy to deal with, and thorough from start to finish. That same willingness to take the awkward parts off someone's hands is exactly what shows up when a garden's been left to run wild after a bereavement or a long illness, rather than through any fault of the person who lived there. We're a Licensed Waste Carrier (reference CBDU538050) and fully insured for the work we do, and we recycle first wherever we can - reusable garden furniture and salvageable timber goes to charity or resale before anything goes to a licensed recycling centre, and very little of what we collect ends up in landfill.

Areas we cover for garden clearance

Derby is home ground for us, and it's where most garden clearance calls come from - everything from tight terraced yards near the city centre to the larger plots out towards the suburbs. Leafy DE22 addresses near Markeaton Park and Darley Park tend to have bigger, older gardens attached to Edwardian and Victorian houses, which is where we most often find a genuinely overgrown lawn, mature shrubs that have outgrown their space, and a shed or two that's been there since the house was built.

Out towards Belper and the Derwent Valley, gardens are often on a slope, sometimes with a flight of steps down from a stone cottage to a small terraced plot, which changes how we get equipment in and waste out compared with a flat suburban garden. We also cover Derbyshire more widely and into Nottinghamshire - Ripley, Heanor, Ilkeston, Alfreton, Ashbourne, Matlock and Chesterfield among them - plus Burton on Trent and Nottingham itself, generally within a 15-25 mile radius of Derby. Anywhere near the Peak District fringe, including Matlock and towards the Monsal Trail, we're conscious that green waste disposed of properly matters to people who live close to the National Park, which is one more reason everything genuinely goes through licensed recycling routes rather than the nearest convenient skip.