For the sloping, tree-heavy blocks of Eltham North, where one good prune fills the green bin five times over and the gums keep dropping between visits.
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 Eltham North 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.
Native shrub prunings and gum litter.
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 back slopes and bush beds.
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.
Fuel cleared from decks, gutters and fences.
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.
Limbs off the gums after a windy night.
Eltham North is quieter and bushier than the streets around the Eltham town centre. A lot of the houses went up in the 1970s and 80s on generous blocks that were never fully cleared, so it is common to have tall eucalypts at the front, a wall of natives down the side and a back garden that runs uphill or down into scrub.
It is a pleasant way to live, but it produces a lot of garden waste. Bark and twigs come down every week, hedges of grevillea and callistemon need cutting back, and the council green bin is full before the job is half done. Ross takes the whole lot in one visit: he loads the trailer by hand, sweeps up and handles the green waste disposal.
Most enquiries from Eltham North are some mix of three things: a pruning pile that has grown over a season or two, leaf and bark litter swept off decks and paths, and branches the trees have let go of. None of it is hard to deal with. There is just a lot of it, and it keeps coming.
Native gardens also have a way of getting away from people. Wattles grow fast and die back, tea-tree gets leggy, and old plantings of bottlebrush end up taller than the house. Cutting them back is the easy part. Getting the bulk green waste off the property is what stalls most people.
Plenty of houses here sit above or below the street. Some have a driveway steep enough that a loaded trailer can't come up it, and others have a garden split into levels with sleeper walls and steps between them.
Ross works around that. He parks where the trailer is safe, and carries or drags the material out through the side gate. If you send a couple of photos showing the pile and the path out to the street, the price will reflect what the job actually involves.
Eltham North is in Nillumbik Shire, and the northern and eastern parts back onto some thick bush. Fine fuel around the house matters most: dry leaves against a fence, bark piled under a deck, dead shrubs next to the walls, and prunings left lying about since winter.
The CFA declares a Fire Danger Period each year and the council sends out fire prevention notices in spring. A fire season clean-up picks up that fuel from around the house and takes it away, rather than leaving a heap that is worse than what was there before.
Once the Fire Danger Period is declared, half of Nillumbik wants the same clean-up done. Get the Eltham North job booked in October or early November and the litter, bark and dry prunings are gone before the hot weather sets in.
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.
