Aussie garden ignored for 25 years gets incredible six hour transformation: 'I've been busy'

There are plenty of reasons why letting your garden turn out like this is a seriously a bad idea.

The Sydney house shown completely overrun by the wild garden.
The Sydney homeowners simply said they had 'been busy'. Source: Facebook/NathanLawnsandGardens

Sometimes we all just need a little help.

For professional gardener Nathan Stafford, that means doing what he does best: Tackling overgrown and unkept garden spaces that have been left to run wild and overwhelm their environment and their homeowner. But few gardens have been left for quiet as long as his most recent case.

The Sydney based gardener is known for his viral videos of helping residents who sometimes can't help themselves. So much so that when he knocked on a local's door this week he was instantly recognised by the homeowner who opened it.

With his profile growing, he's often sent requests to help clear overgrown vegetation in neighbourhoods and suburbs around his city and further abroad. Other times he simply notices them when driving around and decides to knock on their door.

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"I'll just say 'Hey, is there any chance I can help you out?' and nine times out of ten most people say yes," he told Yahoo News Australia on Saturday.

"There's a lot of people behind these doors that have a lot of things going on with them, they're just in their own little world, behind there with no one to help.

"There's a lot of sad stories, to be honest."

The end result this week saw Nathan take on "the biggest makeover" he'd ever approached – cutting back and taming a garden, parts of which apparently hadn't been cleared in a quarter of a century.

In a particularly bad state was a driveway down the side of the Sydney property. "When was the last time any of this was cleaned up?" he asked the homeowner.

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"Twenty-five years," came the response. "...I've been busy".

A time lapse video of his mammoth six hour effort has been watched about 4 million times across social media in just a little over two days.

"It's fair to say when I was doing this it felt like it hadn't been cleaned for a long time!" Nathan said.

Most Aussies could hardly believe the homeowner had left the property in such a dire state for so long. "It's hard to believe that such a pretty place had been neglected for such a long time," one viewer commented.

The Sydney property pictured with all the garden and bushes cut back.
After just six heard spent hours, the home appeared totally transformed. Source: Facebook/NathanLawnsandGardens

Such untamed gardens can come with a major problem, especially at this time of year.

"Definitely this time of year," Nathan told Yahoo. "I am noticing more and more redback spiders and I've seen a lot more funnel webs because of the heat and the rain that we've had. There's a lot more out, so you've really got to be careful."

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Long grass and out-of-control shrubs and bushes are the perfect environment for snakes, spiders and other unwanted guests — a warning previously issued by Aussie vet Dr Liam Donaldson.

"Make sure everything's well cut back... we tend to find grass which is kept relatively short and tidy leaves less places for them [snakes] to hide," he told Yahoo.

That's advice most homeowners will likely want to heed – especially if they happen to have a water tank in their backyard.

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