St Helena's hillside estates have grown up. The gardens planted in the 80s and 90s now need serious cutting back, and Ross takes the waste 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 St Helena 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.
Prunings from mature estate gardens.
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.
Cuttings from overgrown natives and hedges.
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.
Litter cleared on bush-facing blocks.
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 in yards and on drives.
St Helena is a relatively young suburb by north-east standards. Much of it was developed as hillside estates in the 1980s and 90s, with larger brick homes, wide driveways and gardens that were planted with plenty of natives and screening hedges.
Thirty-odd years on, those gardens have grown well beyond what anyone planned. Screening plants are two storeys tall, native shrubs have gone woody, and trees planted as saplings are dropping branches. The green bin fills in an afternoon, so Ross provides green waste removal for St Helena homes by the trailer load.
The typical St Helena job is a garden that was designed for the house when it was new and has been growing ever since. Hedges of lilly pilly or viburnum that used to be waist-high, callistemons swallowing the letterbox, and a line of trees shading the whole back yard.
Cutting them back is a satisfying job, but it produces a huge amount of material. Ross loads it all by hand and sweeps the driveway before leaving.
Most St Helena homes have good access at the front, with wide concrete driveways that the trailer can back up easily. The back yards are another story. Many are built into the slope, with retaining walls, stairs and narrow paths down the sides of the house.
Ross carries material up from the lower levels where he has to. Mention the layout when you enquire and include a photo or two, so the quote accounts for it.
St Helena is part of Nillumbik and some streets back onto reserves and bushland. Dry leaves in gutters, bark under decks and piles of prunings near the house are worth clearing before summer.
A fire season clean-up covers exactly that. Ross loads the fine fuel you have gathered from around the house and takes it away.
Late spring is the moment for St Helena households backing onto bushland to clear litter and dry prunings before the Fire Danger Period. Early autumn is the other good window, after summer growth and before the leaves start falling in earnest.
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.
