Pruning facade greenery? Choose the right scaffold.

A strange collection travels up for pruning work on a green wall: secateurs, long handled loppers, a small pruning saw, thick gloves and a bag or net for the shoots to land in. So the pick here is the Altrex RS TOWER 52, a wide model measuring 135 cm across the deck. On that deck you can swing a pole of a metre and a half without catching the guard rail, and there is room to lay cut wood down. Which other models stand ready is listed under mobile scaffolds to hire.

A narrow 75 cm version looks handier between the planting, but on this job it works against you. Because the frame cannot stand tight to the brickwork, you have to reach a fair way over the green from where you stand. The narrower that deck, the further you hang over the rail, and that is no place to be with two hands on a lopper. The extra width lets you turn side on and keeps your weight inside the frame even when the pole sticks well out.

Deck length is fixed at 245 cm, and that is also the band of facade greenery you finish per set up. With ivy the band is easy to see: you cut a vertical channel clear from top to bottom and leave the edge running neatly. On a trained tree the layout runs differently, because the branches follow the shape the tree was led into years ago. Either way, expect more set ups than the width of the wall suggests.

Ivy does not stop at the gutter. The shoots creep over the lip, in between the tiles and sometimes out onto the roof slope, and those runners are exactly what you want gone. Your highest cut therefore sits above the gutter rather than below it. Over three living storeys that comes out at 8 to 12 metres working height. The deck itself then hangs between 6 and 10 metres, since above the platform you still gain roughly 2 metres of reach. Look at twelve metres working height for that build.

The measuring point at the bottom is treacherous on this job. Greenery usually stands in a border or a raised bed, while the tower goes on the path alongside. So measure from the path, because that is where the wheels roll. If a low garden wall or a sunken terrace sits in between, add that difference on. And look at whether the ivy has also taken a stretch of gable end or a chimney stack, because your highest point then climbs again.

Renting too tight is more dangerous when pruning than on other facade work. The pull to take just that one last runner is strong, and before you know it you are leaning over the rail with a lopper in your hands or hauling yourself up on a branch. Both go wrong eventually, and then your whole rental period hangs on a mishap. Take the roomier reach and work steadily. How high these towers may go is set out in the guidance on maximum height.

The first thirty to fifty centimetres in front of the wall count as occupied on this job. That is where the green sits, and that is where it roots. Standing a leg in a planting bed is not an option: the soil is loose, it settles, and you damage the roots of the very plant you are keeping. So the pitch goes on the path, the terrace or the drive beside it, with the deck at arm's length from the facade greenery.

That pushes the stabilisers outward too. They angle away from the legs and in a narrow back garden they land in the border or against the fence within moments. Cut a strip clear along the bottom from ground level first, so the foot has somewhere to sit and the wheels have a run. On soft ground put a plate under each foot point. For a path that falls away or has partly sunk, read the guidance on uneven ground.

Then look up at whatever else is fixed to the wall. Guide wires, tensioning wires and old hooks hide inside facade greenery, and so does the downpipe that has disappeared into it completely. Find those things before the scaffold goes up, or you will find them with your loppers. Check for nests as well: in spring a thick blanket of ivy houses more birds than you would credit, and then you shift the job by a season rather than cutting on.

The cutting itself is not the problem. What fills the days is everything that comes after it. Per set up you spend half an hour with the loppers and then another twenty minutes working the cut material down, raking it together and carrying it off. For an overgrown front elevation of three storeys that adds up to two days, and for a wall left alone for years, three. The volume of green is almost always bigger than it looked.

The waiting here is not drying time but disposal. A garden waste bin gets emptied once a fortnight and is full after half a wall, so order a skip or book a run to the tip at a moment that fits. Weather counts too: wet leaf makes both the plant and the deck slippery, and in wind a branch still in leaf swings around you like a sail. Pruning on a dry, still day goes twice as fast.

So plan your rental period on the generous side. Only that first twenty four hours is charged at the full rate; from then on each rental day carries 95 per cent off, so an extra day for the last barrow loads costs you almost nothing. That is a comfortable ratio on work whose true size only shows once the first channel is open. If the planning is tight, the overview of rental periods helps you judge the days.

Per set up you take on a band of 245 cm, from the roof edge down to the point you can still reach from the ground. Work downwards, so the cut green lands on the stretch you have yet to do and not on the edge you have just finished. Spread a sheet or an old rug below that covers the whole band. It saves you raking between the plants later, and it keeps the shoots together for disposal.

Moving on always starts with clearing up here. Branches under a wheel make the tower run off line, and a shoot twisted round a stabiliser drags the whole foot with it when you push. So lift the sheet away, sweep the run clean, check that nothing is wound round the tubes, and only then roll on. Brake the wheels again and put the stabilisers back out before you climb. A minute of raking first saves five minutes of shoving.

What people misjudge is the weight and the bulk. Wet ivy leaf is heavy, and a band of two metres soon fills a barrow. So carry nothing up that you will not use there, and send the waste down straight away. Reckon on a fair number of barrow trips per wall. If you want the green gone altogether rather than merely shortened, that is a different job; see the page on taking ivy off a wall.

The tower reaches you in loose parts, counted and complete, and that pile has to go somewhere. Do not pick the border, and do not pick the strip where the cuttings will land, or you will be digging components out of a heap. A drive or a piece of terrace further along works better. Timing matters as well: get your order in on a working day and beat 15:00, and the parts arrive on the next working day.

You decide which day the set is dropped and which day it leaves. For pruning you look at the calendar first and the forecast second. A densely covered wall is tackled outside the nesting season, so late autumn or early spring. Let the delivery land just before your first cutting day and make sure the skip is there by then too, or the green will occupy your working space. Erection time is set out in the step by step build guide.

When you have finished we come for the mobile scaffold. You take it apart and stand the components ready, complete, at the point where they were dropped. Shake the leaves and the cut shoots off the tubes and the deck boards before you stack them, because green left in between stains and makes the count awkward. Allow half an hour for that. What the run to your province costs, both ways, sits in the overview of delivery charges.

Load class 3 is what EN 1004 assigns these towers, and it means the deck holds 200 kg for every square metre. When pruning you reach that sooner than expected, because a sack of wet leaf and thick shoots is heavy and you are seldom up there on your own. So do not let full sacks sit on the boards waiting; send them down as they fill. What the limit means for your loading is explained in the note on the scaffold standard.

The standing rules apply here without exception. Brake the wheels as soon as anyone climbs on, never roll the frame while a person or a tool is aboard, and keep off it when the wind is up. That wind limit sits lower with greenery than you would guess: branches in leaf catch air like a sail and give a tug you have not allowed for. At each new pitch check the four stabilisers and look for a shoot twisted round one. Ten seconds.

The hazard that truly belongs to pruning is the tooling. Loppers or a saw rested on the guard rail come down sooner or later, so keep the strip beneath you empty and warn anyone crossing the garden. Never haul yourself towards the wall by a branch or a runner, because the plant will not hold you. To get further along, shift the scaffold half a metre instead of stretching. More is set out in the rules for work at height.