Hocus Crocus Gardens & Trees · Based near Knaresborough
Gardener and Tree Surgeon in Nidderdale
Rated 4.5 from 19 Google reviews
Nidderdale is where Hocus Crocus started, and it is still the ground Karen knows best. The dale runs the length of the River Nidd, from Great Whernside and the Angram and Scar House reservoirs at the top, down through Middlesmoor, Lofthouse, Ramsgill and Gouthwaite, into Pateley Bridge and Bewerley, then on through Glasshouses, Summerbridge, Dacre Banks, Darley, Birstwith and Hampsthwaite to the Nidd Gorge at Knaresborough.
That is a lot of very different gardening in about thirty miles. The head of the dale is high, wet and genuinely exposed. The lower dale, once you are past Summerbridge, is softer, more sheltered and a good three weeks ahead in spring. 28 years working the whole length of it, established 1998, is what makes the difference between a garden that survives here and one that gets replanted every other year.
Free visit and a written price anywhere in Nidderdale. No hard sell.
WhatsApp Karen about Nidderdale Call Karen on 07816 779 064
Hedges and boundaries
Hedges are half the work in this dale
Boundary hedges up here take the weather for you, which means they grow hard on one side and get thin on the other. Cutting is done on a timed round and outside nesting season, with the arisings cleared and taken away.
Where a hedge has gone too far to trim, it can usually be reduced hard and brought back over a couple of seasons rather than ripped out and replaced, which is cheaper and keeps the shelter you already have.
What customers in the dale say
Have used several local companies on my very large garden in Pateley Bridge as well as a few properties I rent out until I was recommended Karen at Hocus Crocus and now I would not use anyone else. The tree surgeons are highly skilled and had no problem cutting down a huge 70 ft sycamore tree
Property owner, Pateley Bridge
Google review
Design and makeovers
Whole gardens, not just the upkeep
Plenty of dale properties reach a point where tidying is not the answer and the garden needs rethinking: levels, a proper lawn, new borders, somewhere to sit that catches the evening sun rather than the wind.
Karen designs and plants it, and the team builds it. An award for best show garden at the Harrogate Spring Flower Show is on the wall, but the useful part here is that the person drawing it has looked after gardens in this dale for 28 years and knows what will still be alive in five.
What we do through the dale
The bread and butter is scheduled garden maintenance: fortnightly or monthly mowing, edges, borders weeded and mulched, hedges cut on a timed round and outside nesting season, and the whole lot tidied and taken away before we leave. Alongside that runs the tree work, which is the other half of the business and the reason a lot of dale properties ring in the first place.
Bigger jobs are garden design and makeovers, new lawns and turfing, planting schemes built around your soil and aspect, pond clearing and jet washing. For commercial premises in the dale, from pubs and tea rooms to estates and holiday lets, there is a separate commercial page.
Karen is NPTC approved, fully insured, DBS checked and IOSH certified, which is what allows the team onto schools, farmland, sports grounds and other sites plenty of gardeners cannot take on.
Real jobs
Work from up and down the dale
Karen's own photographs.
Towns and villages in the dale with a page of their own
- Pateley Bridge
- Bewerley
- Summerbridge and Dacre Banks
- Hampsthwaite and Birstwith
- Killinghall
- Knaresborough
- Harrogate
- Ripon
- Middlesmoor
- Lofthouse
- Ramsgill
- Wath
- Bouthwaite
- Glasshouses
- Wilsill
- Darley
- Burnt Yates
- Shaw Mills
Not answered here? Call Karen on 07816 779 064.
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