From jungle to stripes: the gardeners rescuing Cosyford one lawn at a time

Each job starts with a garden you can barely see. Drag the strimmer through the long grass and weeds (brambles take two goes), and square off the hedge at the front into a neat block. Then tap the rubbish and the heaps of clippings, and Fern chucks them in the skip. You never know what turns up in the long grass.

Next, the mower: hold where you want it to go, and up-and-down lines give you proper stripes. Finish with the half-moon edger round the lawn for crisp edges.

Then the garden blooms: flowers pop up along the beds, the patio scrubs up and the pond clears, and the owner comes out to see. You finish on a before-and-after picture you can drag across. Bigger gardens, with ponds, sheds and trees, come along as the business grows.

Not every job is a jungle, either. Some of the gardens on the street are already tidy and want something else doing. In autumn you rake the leaves onto sheets and pick the ripe apples (a child jumps in one pile, and a hedgehog moves into the other). You lay a patio slab by slab to the owner's pattern and brush sand into the joints, or hoe and plant a veg patch row by row. You net the duckweed out of a murky pond and float lily pads until a frog hops on, or clip a bush into a ball, a wedding cake or a duck.