The screening hedges, natives and lawns of Croydon Hills' family estates need regular cutting back. Ross takes away what comes off.
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 Croydon Hills 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.
Screening hedges and estate garden 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.
Family gardens tidied for sale or a fresh start.
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 litter cleared from bush-edge homes.
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.
Branches down from the remnant gums.
Croydon Hills is mostly a product of the 1980s and 1990s — family estates of brick homes set around courts and curving streets, with some remnant eucalypts left standing between them. The blocks are a comfortable size, the gardens were landscaped when the houses were built, and a lot of the original owners are still there.
Those estate gardens were designed for privacy, so they are heavy on screening plants: lilly pillies, viburnum, photinia and conifers along every boundary. Keeping them to height is the main source of green waste in Croydon Hills, followed by native shrubs and lawn edges that need a regular tidy.
A mature lilly pilly or viburnum screen can put on a lot of growth in a single season. Trim it twice a year and the trimmings still fill several green bins, and if it's been left for a few years, a hard cut-back produces a trailer load on its own.
Ross comes after the cutting is done, gathers the trimmings off the lawn and garden beds, and takes it all away as green waste. If you use a hedge contractor who doesn't take their clippings, he can follow them in.
Plenty of Croydon Hills owners are now redoing the front garden they put in when they moved in. Out come the overgrown shrubs and tired plantings, and in go new beds and lawn. The removal part is where the green waste piles up.
Ross can take away the old plants and cut material in one visit so the landscaper or the weekend gardener has a clean slate. He doesn't take the soil or the old edging, just the garden material.
The tall eucalypts that were kept when the estates were laid out are now large, mature trees. They shed bark and branches, and a windy night can leave a limb across a lawn or fence.
Ross will load and clear branches that are already down. Anything still in the tree, or a tree that's leaning, is an arborist's job, and Maroondah City Council will need to be asked about a permit before significant trees are removed.
Screening hedges in Croydon Hills put on the most growth through spring and early summer, and most people trim in late spring and again in autumn. Book a green waste collection for right after you cut, and the clippings won't sit on the lawn killing the grass.
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.
