From the older houses near the station to the streets that run down to the beach, Mentone gardens are established, and they produce green waste in quantity.
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 Mentone 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.
Big hedges, palms and old shrubbery.
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.
Period-home gardens and bayside units tidied.
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.
Summer tidy of dry beds and leaf drifts.
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.
Old tree limbs collected and cleared.
Mentone has some of the older housing on this stretch of the bay. Around the station and along the streets toward the beach there are period homes, interwar bungalows and gardens that have been growing for a long time, mixed in with newer apartments and unit developments.
Older gardens tend to have big specimens: palms, overgrown camellias and hedges that have gone past head height. When those are cut back the volume is serious. Ross takes care of green waste removal in Mentone for jobs from a single overgrown hedge to a full garden clear-out.
A cotoneaster or privet hedge that has been let go, a clump of palms that drops fronds every season, a row of pittosporums grown into trees — these are common in Mentone. Cutting them back is only half the job; getting rid of the waste is the rest.
Ross loads the trailer by hand, bulky material included, and leaves the area swept.
The streets nearer Beach Road take more wind and salt, and the gardens there lean toward hardy coastal plants that grow thick and need regular cutting. Parking can be tight in summer, so a weekday booking is often easiest.
Units and apartments in these streets often have small shared gardens with a gardener who trims but does not remove. A regular green waste pickup after each visit keeps it from piling up.
Older gardens sometimes contain plants that are now considered weeds, such as agapanthus that self-seeds everywhere or ivy that has climbed through fences. Pulling them out produces more waste than people expect.
Ross takes weeds and invasive plants along with other green waste, and the load goes to a facility for processing rather than into landfill.
If Mentone’s beach traffic makes parking hard from December on, it pays to book the spring garden clean-up in October or November. That also gets the waste off the property before the gardens dry out.
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.
