Solid family homes, a growing number of townhouses and plenty of back yards to keep on top of. Ross takes Ashburton's garden waste away by the trailer load.
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 Ashburton 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.
Back-yard prunings from family homes.
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.
Clearing yards before subdivision or sale.
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.
Dead shrubs and dry litter removed 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 after a storm, loaded and carted.
Ashburton is a quieter, more modest part of Boroondara, sitting on the eastern side of Gardiners Creek with the High Street shops and the Alamein railway line running through it. Much of the housing went up after the war — weatherboards, cream brick and plain brick-veneer homes on proper suburban blocks.
A lot of those blocks are now being split up, with a townhouse or two going in where one house stood. Between the family homes that still have big back yards and the sites being cleared for building, there's a steady call for green waste removal in Ashburton. Ross loads it by hand and takes it away for recycling.
When an old Ashburton house is sold for development, the garden is often decades deep: fruit trees, a row of conifers down the back, overgrown shrubs and a shed covered in creeper. Clearing the green material before demolition keeps it out of the building waste.
Ross loads the lot, as long as it is garden material. Stumps still in the ground and soil stay behind for the excavator.
For the houses that stay, the back yard is still the main event. Lawns, trampolines, a vegetable bed or two and big shrubs along the boundary mean there's always something to prune.
Instead of trimming a little at a time to fit the bin, many households do a proper cut-back once or twice a year and book Ross to take the pile. It is quicker and the garden looks better for it.
The streets closer to Gardiners Creek have a lot of mature eucalypts and other large trees. They drop bark and small branches all year and larger limbs in strong winds.
Ross collects what has fallen and takes it away. Standing trees, or limbs hung up in the canopy, are a job for an arborist, and Boroondara City Council may need to approve removal.
If you are selling an Ashburton house, get the yard cleared before the listing photos. Buyers — whether they are families or developers — look at the size and usability of the block, and a garden buried in overgrowth hides both.
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.
