Hedge trimmings, prunings and autumn leaves cleared from Ringwood yards — from the older quarter-acre blocks to the townhouse courtyards near Eastland.
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 Ringwood 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.
Hedge and shrub prunings from older Ringwood blocks.
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 yards near the station.
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 litter cleared 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.
Limbs down in the back yard after a storm.
Ringwood is a suburb in two halves. Around Eastland, the station and Maroondah Highway it has filled in with units, townhouses and apartments. Step a few streets back and you are into the original post-war and 1960s housing — brick veneers on generous blocks, with hedges, fruit trees and big old natives that were planted when the houses went up.
Those older gardens are where most of the green waste comes from. A single session on an overgrown hedge fills more than one green bin, and a back fence line of shrubs that has been left for a few years can make a proper trailer load. Ross comes out, loads it by hand and takes it away for recycling.
A lot of Ringwood blocks have been split, with a unit or two built down the back. The remaining garden is smaller but often still has the original plantings — a tall cypress or photinia screen, camellias, a lemon tree and a lawn that has been edged a hundred times.
Where the block hasn't been subdivided, the garden can be surprisingly big for a suburb this close to a major shopping centre. Those are the jobs where a green waste pickup every season or two keeps things from getting away.
Shared driveways are common in Ringwood, and they change how a job runs. Ross keeps the trailer clear of the neighbours' cars where he can, loads as quickly as possible and sweeps the concrete before he leaves so nobody is walking leaves into their unit.
If the pile is down the side of a unit or behind a garage, mention it when you book. It's not a problem, but it does affect how long the load takes, and that goes into the price.
Ringwood has a steady turnover of rentals, and a lot of end-of-lease yards look the same: hedges gone wild, a pile of prunings the last tenant never dealt with, and green bins that have been full for weeks. Ross clears the lot so the property manager has one less thing to chase.
Selling is the other common reason for a call. A yard cleared of dead growth and garden waste photographs better and looks cared for at the open. Give him a few days' notice before the photographer is booked.
Ringwood's street trees and old garden deciduous trees drop most of their leaves across April and May, and that is also when a lot of people do their big cut-back. Get in early in autumn and the job is done before the wet weather turns the pile to mush.
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.
