We would rather tell you what your hedge actually is than sell you a hedge trim. That sounds like a small thing. It is the difference between a garden that gets better every year and one that quietly costs you more.
No story, just the details worth knowing before you let anyone onto your property.
These are not values on a wall. They are the operating rules, and every one of them shows up on the invoice or the section.
Species decides everything on hedge and tree work. Pittosporum recovers from a hard cut, griselinia recovers slowly, and a conifer never recovers at all. Getting that wrong is not a bad afternoon — it is a permanent brown hole in your boundary. So we work it out first, and tell you what we found.
Fixed before we start, green waste disposal already in it, and no GST added on top. Nothing appears on an invoice that was not on the quote. If something outside the scope needs doing, we quote it and wait — there are no “while we were there” charges.
Whoever is on your section this fortnight is who was there last fortnight. It means we know your property — the gate that sticks, the bank that gets soft, the bed you would rather we left alone — and you are not explaining it to strangers every visit.
Green waste goes on the trailer and off to be composted — Te Maunga for the Tauranga City areas, Western Bay facilities for Ōmokoroa, Te Puna and Te Puke. Nothing gets pushed into a reserve, a stream margin or over a back fence because it is easier than loading it.
No lock-in on residential work, no minimum term, no cancellation fee. Pause for winter, skip a visit, or leave entirely. We would rather keep customers because the lawn looks good than because leaving is difficult.
Any contractor will tell you what they can do. This is the shorter, more useful list — the jobs we regularly turn down, and why.
“Can you just take the top off that tree? It’s got too big.”
Topping a mature tree is the one job genuinely worth refusing. It responds with a mass of weak, fast regrowth attached to a large wound, so within a few years the tree is back to the same size but structurally worse and more likely to fail, not less. A selective reduction costs more once and far less across twenty years.
“The lawn’s had it. Can you price a new one?”
Most lawns that look finished are thatchy, mossy or thin with perfectly good grass underneath. Dethatching, feeding and overseeding in autumn brings them back for a fraction of a replacement. Replacement genuinely makes sense in two cases — when the ground is compacted so badly nothing will root into it, and when there is more weed than grass left. We will tell you honestly which you have.
“Can you mow that bank out the back?”
On a genuinely steep bank, mowing is a safety question rather than a preference — and it is a cost every fortnight forever. Chunky mulch over weed mat, or low ground-cover planting, usually works out cheaper across five years and looks better than a bank that gets scalped. Sometimes the honest answer is that your bank is fine and you are worrying about nothing.
“Put us on weekly, we want it looking sharp.”
Consistent fortnightly across the year beats weekly, because otherwise you are paying for cuts the lawn has not earned in July. Our schedule steps up to weekly through the December to February peak and back to monthly over winter at no change to your rate. What does not work is letting it go a month in summer — a rescue cut costs more than the visits you skipped.
“Take the hedge down by a metre and a half.”
If it is pittosporum or photinia, no problem — it will be dense again in a season. If it is macrocarpa, leylandii or cryptomeria, cutting that far goes past the green shell into dead brown wood and it stays brown permanently. On a shelter belt that does not just look bad, it removes the shelter. We stage those over two or three seasons instead.
None of this is us being difficult. Every one of these positions is written up in detail on the relevant service and area pages — we would rather you read it and decide than take our word for it. Turning down the bigger job and doing the right smaller one is simply better business over ten years than the reverse.
One crew, one visit, one invoice. Most people start with the mowing and add the rest as they realise it can all happen on the same day.
A short list, and we would rather publish it than let it be assumed. If a job is outside it we will say so and point you at someone who does it properly.
Asbestos, paint, garden chemicals, gas bottles. We will tell you the right drop-off rather than quietly leaving it behind.
We will flag a broken line if we find one, but repairing it is somebody else’s trade.
Paving, retaining walls, decking and fencing. We work on what grows, not what gets built.
We will clear branches off a roofline. We will not go up there to do anything else.
If a tree needs a qualified arborist with climbing gear, that is who should be doing it — not us learning on your property.
We will write down exactly what is being cut so both households can see it. We will not take a side.
Twelve areas run as scheduled routes across two councils. Each has its own page, because the ground genuinely is different in each one.
Two quotes said they would take the hedge down by a metre and a half. Lawnify came out, told me it was macrocarpa and that cutting that far would leave it brown for good, and staged it over two seasons instead. Nobody else even looked at what it was.
The things people want settled before they book anyone.
Yes — full public liability on every job, residential and commercial. We will hand over a current certificate without being asked twice, and it comes with commercial quotes as standard. It is a fair thing to ask any contractor for before they set foot on your property, and any legitimate one will produce it.
No. Lawnify is a mobile service — there is no shopfront to call into. The crew, the gear and the trailer come to your property instead, which is how we cover twelve areas rather than one suburb. Quotes and site visits are free, and on a standard section we can often price it from a couple of photos without visiting at all.
No. Lawnify is the lawn and garden care arm of At Your Service Limited, locally owned and run from Tauranga. The people who quote your property are the people who turn up to it, and you get the same crew each visit rather than whoever is on the roster.
Because we are not currently GST registered, so there is none to add. The figure we quote is the figure you pay, with green waste disposal already in it. Worth knowing if you are comparing quotes — a GST-registered competitor’s headline number and their final invoice will not be the same.
Everything we cut leaves on our trailer. For the Tauranga City areas it goes to the Te Maunga transfer station and is composted rather than landfilled; Ōmokoroa, Te Puna and Te Puke are in the Western Bay of Plenty District and use their own facilities. Disposal is already in your quoted price either way. What we will not take is anything needing licensed disposal.
Yes, and it is a decent share of what we do. Rentals come with dated before and after photos and itemised invoices, with several properties consolidated onto one monthly invoice by address. Commercial grounds run as fixed annual programmes with a written scope, a site-specific safety plan and a current liability certificate, invoiced in twelve equal instalments.
As the routes grow, yes. If you have experience, a clean licence and you turn up when you say you will, email us at quotes@lawnify.co.nz with a bit about yourself. There is no formal application and no closing date — we read everything that comes in.
Ring or text 020 4070 8239, or email quotes@lawnify.co.nz. Weekday enquiries in before mid-afternoon get a reply the same day; anything later or over a weekend is picked up the next working morning. If you get voicemail it means we are on a machine — leave a message or send a text with your address and we will call back.
