From Victorian cottages near Sydney Road to postwar blocks further out, Coburg gardens grow plenty. Ross loads the pile by hand and takes it away.
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 Coburg 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.
Pruning piles from cottages to postwar 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.
Overgrown yards and neglected fence lines.
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.
Old cuttings and dead growth shifted.
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-blown limbs cleared from yards.
Coburg runs north from the Brunswick border, with the Merri Creek along its eastern edge and Sydney Road and the Upfield line running through the middle. The southern streets have Victorian and Edwardian cottages much like Brunswick; further north the blocks get wider, with interwar bungalows and postwar brick houses on proper back yards.
That wider back yard is the difference. There’s room for fruit trees, a vegie garden, a hedge down the side and a shed with a vine over it — and room for the cuttings to pile up. Ross runs green waste removal in Coburg for exactly that: loading the trailer by hand and taking it to be recycled.
A lot of Coburg back yards were set up to grow food, and many still do. Grapevines on a frame, fig and loquat trees, lemons and olives, tomato and bean frames that end up as a tangle of dead stalks every autumn.
At pruning time, all of that becomes a pile. Old fruit trees that are cut back hard can fill a trailer on their own.
Sometimes it isn’t one pile but the whole yard. Common Coburg situations: an elderly parent who can no longer manage the garden, a rental where no one has touched the back for years, or a house about to go on the market.
Once the shrubs are cut back and the weeds pulled, a garden clean-up gets it back to something manageable — every pile, the loose prunings and the dead growth loaded and taken away in one go.
The streets near the Merri Creek and Coburg Lake Reserve often have bigger trees and more shade, which means more leaf litter and more twigs in the gutters. Blocks backing onto open space can also catch weeds blowing in.
Those gardens are well suited to a regular green waste collection — say, after autumn and again in spring — rather than letting it build up.
Most of Coburg’s fruit trees and vines get pruned in July and August. Book a pickup for straight afterwards so the cuttings aren’t still sitting in the yard when the spring rain arrives and everything starts sprouting.
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.
