People warned to be vigilant against cowboy gardeners

According to award-winning landscape gardener Bunny Guinness, speaking in her blog on the Daily Telegraph, the current financial constraints placed on people currently mean that garden work is “ripe for exploitation”.

A recent report from Oxford County Council suggested they had received a huge increase (50 per cent) in the number of complaints to Trading Standards for garden and tree work.

“Quotations for jobs which are suspiciously low usually mean something is missing, and every trick in the book has been pulled to gain lost ground. It is often worth getting three quotations,” she continued.

Chairman of the Association of Professional Landscapers Mark Gregory suggested that some of the cowboys are deliberately ripping people off, while others are doing it to make a living and don’t know what they’re doing