Cottage gardens, rear laneways and yards that have not seen a pair of secateurs in years. Ross picks up the prunings in Ascot Vale and takes the green waste away by trailer.
Not a franchisee or a truck driver from a booking system. The bloke who quotes it is the bloke who loads it.
No bags to fill, no skip to load. Leave it in a pile and he loads it, sweeps up and takes it away.
Not a bin size. A heap beside the driveway and one at the bottom of a steep yard are different jobs and get different prices.
Standing tree, asbestos, or more rubbish than garden — he tells you before he starts, not after.
A pruning pile hauled away and a few bags of leaf litter collected is the usual combination on a Ascot Vale block.
Piles of prunings, branches, hedge trimmings, leaves and weeds that won't fit in the green bin. Ross backs the trailer in, loads it himself and takes it away to be recycled — you don't lift a thing.
Cottage garden prunings and shrub cutbacks.
Doing a big garden clean-up — overgrown beds, a back corner nobody has touched in years, a rental between tenants or a property being tidied for sale? Pile it all up and Ross collects the lot in one visit.
Overgrown yards behind Victorian cottages.
Fallen limbs, shed bark, leaf litter and dry prunings gathered up from around the house — the fine fuel that matters most in a grassfire or ember attack. Collected and taken away before the Fire Danger Period starts.
Dry weeds and cut growth taken away before summer.
A gum has dropped a limb across the driveway, or a windy night has left the yard covered. Ross collects what's come down and hauls it away. Standing trees and hung-up limbs are an arborist's job — once they've dropped it, Ross can take it away.
Branches down across a laneway or back fence.
A lot of Ascot Vale is Victorian and Edwardian cottages on narrow blocks, with small front gardens and back yards that open onto a rear lane or a shared fence line. It is a suburb where gardens are close together and a lot gets packed into a small space.
That means roses, fruit trees, climbers and established shrubs all competing for room, and when they are not cut back every year they quickly take over. Pruning a garden like that properly can easily produce more green waste than the council bin can take in a month.
Ascot Vale cottage gardens often have a surprising amount planted in them. A grapevine over the pergola, a lemon and a fig in the back corner, a creeper on the side fence and a line of shrubs along the front. Each of them needs cutting back at some point, and the cuttings add up fast.
Ross takes all of it: vine and fruit tree prunings, creeper pulled off the fence, and the shrubs you have finally decided to cut down to the ground.
Where a property backs onto a laneway, the back gate is often the easiest way to get the waste out. The trailer can sometimes be backed into the lane, which saves carrying everything through the house or down a tight side path.
Let Ross know if there is lane access and how wide the gate is. If the lane is too narrow for the trailer, he will park at the end and carry it out.
Winter is the right time to prune most fruit trees and roses, and early spring is when the rest of the garden takes off. By November, creepers and hedges in Ascot Vale are growing fast and the weeds in the lane are waist high.
A clean-up at the end of winter, followed by a green waste pickup, sets the garden up for the year. Another quick cut back in late spring keeps it under control through summer.
The best time for an Ascot Vale garden is late winter and early spring, after the fruit trees and roses have been pruned but before everything starts growing again. Booking then means the removal is sorted before the spring growth makes the job bigger.
Suburb, roughly how much there is, and what the access is like. A photo saves a lot of back and forth.
Ross comes back with a number. On big or awkward jobs he has a look first rather than guessing.
Loaded by hand, driveway swept, and off for proper green waste disposal.
Ross runs this on his own. He quotes the job, he turns up, he loads the trailer and he takes it away — the same bloke every visit. There is no office in between, no skip company, and no franchise cut coming out of what you pay.
It also means he will tell you when something isn't his job — a standing tree that needs an arborist, or a pile that is more rubbish than garden — rather than taking the money and leaving you with half a problem.
The suburb, roughly how much there is, and how easy it is to get a trailer to it is enough to work with. A photo of the pile gets you a price fastest.
Prefer to talk? Call or text Ross on 0416 030 925. Monday to Saturday, daylight hours — weather permitting.
Get a price on your pile. Takes a minute — Ross reads them himself.
Thanks — that's gone through to Ross. Spring is his busiest time, so if it's close to fire season he may take a day or two.
