Prunings, vine cuttings, hedge trimmings and bagged leaves carried out through the side passage or the back gate and taken away — built around Northcote’s narrow blocks and laneways.
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 Northcote 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.
Carried out through side passages and laneways.
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.
Rentals and pre-sale tidy-ups on tight blocks.
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 prunings and dead growth cleared by 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.
Street-tree and backyard limbs after a storm.
Northcote is mostly Victorian and Edwardian houses on long, narrow blocks — single-fronted weatherboards, brick cottages and a fair few renovated terraces, with the garden squeezed in down the side or out the back. The gardens are small, but they are packed: fruit trees, grapevines over the pergola, climbers on the fence, a hedge along the front and a vegie patch in whatever sun is left.
All of that gets cut back at some point, and a single green bin fills up in about ten minutes of pruning. Ross does green waste removal Northcote residents can book without hiring a skip that blocks the street for a week. He carries it out, loads the trailer at the kerb or in the lane, sweeps up and takes it to a green waste facility.
An inner-north garden grows hard because it is watered, fed and sheltered by fences on three sides. Ornamental grapes, passionfruit, jasmine and wisteria will cover a pergola in a season. Figs, lemons and plums get big if nobody has touched them for a few years.
Then there is the stuff that builds up quietly: bamboo clumps that have jumped the fence line, ivy pulled off a brick wall, palm fronds, and bags of leaves from the plane or elm out the front. None of it is a big job on its own. Together it is a trailer load.
The access is usually the hard part. Plenty of houses have no side gate at all, just a passage barely a wheelbarrow wide, or everything has to come through the hallway. A lot of the older streets have bluestone laneways out the back, which can be the easiest way out if the back gate still opens.
Ross works out the route before he starts and lays a tarp where it needs to go through the house. If parking out the front is tight, mention it — a laneway pickup or an early start usually sorts it.
Northcote has a lot of rental houses, and the garden is often the last thing anyone deals with at the end of a lease. Overgrown beds, a vine through the fence and a pile of cuttings behind the shed can hold up a bond, or make an open-for-inspection look tired.
A one-off garden clean-up clears the lot in a morning. Agents and landlords can book it directly — Ross just needs to know how to get in and what is to go.
Northcote’s big street trees let go of their leaves from late April, and the garden cut-backs usually happen at the same time. Book a pickup for late autumn or early spring, before the green bin has been overflowing for a month and the pile behind the shed has doubled.
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.
