Solid postwar brick homes, wide front lawns and ornamental gardens planted decades ago. Ross loads up and takes away the green waste across Strathmore.
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 Strathmore 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.
Ornamental shrub and rose prunings by the load.
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.
Clean-up waste cleared away before a sale.
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 growth and old mulch taken away 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.
Branches off established ornamentals after wind.
Strathmore is mostly postwar: cream and red brick houses from the 1940s through the 1960s, set back behind front lawns on reasonably wide blocks. Many of those gardens were planted by the first owners with camellias, azaleas, roses, conifers and neatly clipped shrubs, and a lot of the plants are still there.
Seventy-year-old shrubs do not stay small. By now many of them are well past the gutter line, and a serious cut back produces far more garden waste than the bin can take. Some owners do it in stages; others get it all done at once and book a single green waste pickup to clear it away.
A camellia that started under the front window can end up covering it. Conifers planted as a neat border along the drive can be three metres tall and hanging over the path. Cutting that sort of growth back hard, or removing it altogether, makes a big difference to how a Strathmore house looks from the street.
Once you or your gardener have done the cutting, Ross comes and collects the lot and takes it away in one visit.
Many Strathmore houses have a driveway down one side, which makes life easy. The trailer can often be backed right up to the pile, so a big load goes quickly.
Where there is a carport or garage in the way, or the drive has been narrowed by a fence, Ross will carry the waste out the old-fashioned way. Photos of the drive and the pile help him plan it.
When a long-held Strathmore home comes onto the market, the garden is often the first thing an agent mentions. Overgrown shrubs hide the house, weeds make it look neglected, and a pile of prunings behind the garage does not help at inspections.
Once the worst of the growth is cut back, a pre-sale green waste pickup removes the lot so the house can be seen properly. Leave enough time before the photos so the garden looks settled rather than freshly hacked.
Spring is when a lot of Strathmore properties are listed, and it is also when gardens start growing hard. If you are thinking of selling, do the cut back and book the pickup in late winter so the shrubs have a few weeks to recover before the photos and the first open for inspection.
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.
