Hedge offcuts, pruning heaps and storm-dropped limbs cleared off the sloping, well-planted blocks that make up so much of Templestowe.
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 Templestowe 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.
Hedges, ornamentals and big lawn-edge prunings.
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.
Terraced back yards and tiered garden 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.
Leaf and bark build-up on the Yarra side.
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.
Wind-dropped limbs on the ridgeline streets.
Templestowe sits on the rise above the Yarra, and most of its houses went up from the 1970s onward on generous blocks carved out of old orchard land. The result is a suburb of big brick homes, wide front lawns and gardens that have had forty-odd years to fill in. Hedges have grown into walls, ornamental trees overhang the driveway, and the natives planted along the back fence are now well over the roofline.
All that growth has to go somewhere when it gets cut back. A council green bin swallows a couple of barrow loads at most. A proper Templestowe prune — the hedge along the frontage, the lilly pilly screen, a few overgrown shrubs — can fill a trailer. Ross comes out, loads it himself and takes it off for green waste disposal at a facility that mulches it.
A lot of Templestowe homes were set up with formal gardens — clipped hedges, standard roses, conifers and ornamental plums. Many of those plantings are now twice the size anyone intended. When they finally get a hard cut, the pile is usually bigger than people expect.
Screening hedges between neighbours are the classic example. Take a metre off the top and the side of a thirty-metre run of lilly pilly or photinia and you've got bulk green waste that needs a trailer, not a wheelie bin.
Templestowe is hilly. Plenty of houses are split-level, with the garage at street level and the back yard stepping down several terraces. Getting a pile from the bottom terrace up to the street is often the slowest part of the job.
It's worth mentioning the stairs and the distance when you get in touch. Ross will carry it up where the trailer can't reach, and he'll price it with that in mind rather than surprise you on the day.
The northern streets run down toward the river and the bushland around Westerfolds Park. Blocks on that side tend to have more eucalypts and more natural understorey, which means more bark, leaf litter and fallen sticks than the manicured streets further south.
If your place backs onto that kind of country, a clean-up of the litter and dry growth around the house before summer is sensible. Once it's raked into a pile, Ross can load it and take it away in the same visit.
Most Templestowe gardens get their big cut in September and October, when hedges and shrubs are putting on new growth. That same window is the right time to clear dry litter from the treed streets near the river. Book early in spring and the pile is gone before the summer heat and the Christmas rush.
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.
