Thornbury gardens have had decades to grow. Ross loads the pile by hand and takes it off for green waste disposal, so you are not stuffing branches into the bin for the next two months.
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 Thornbury 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, fruit trees and bungalow 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.
Green waste cleared from long-neglected yards.
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 dry cuttings shifted 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.
Limbs down across the fence or the drive.
Thornbury is a mix of Edwardian weatherboards, interwar bungalows and brick houses from after the war, with a steady stream of units and townhouses going in between them. Blocks tend to be a bit wider and deeper than further south, and many of the original gardens are still there — lemon trees, almonds, olives, grapevines and fig trees planted by the families who built the place.
That makes for a lot of cutting back. A decent prune of an old fruit tree fills more than one wheelie bin, and a neglected yard can take a trailer or two. Ross handles the green waste pickup: he loads it himself and takes it to be mulched.
A big share of Thornbury back yards still have the productive gardens they were set up with — a fig against the shed, a lemon by the back door, olives and grapes along the fence. Left alone for a few years they get enormous, and the first serious prune produces a mountain of timber.
Ross takes the lot, including the thick older wood that won’t go in a council bin. If you are getting a gardener or arborist in to do the pruning, he can come the same week and take the pile away once it is on the ground.
Thornbury has plenty of houses that were in one family for fifty years or more. When they are sold, the garden is often well past a weekend job — shrubs grown into the gutters, fruit trees over the roof and paths lost under growth.
That is a bigger job than a simple pickup. Once the garden has been cut back, Ross works through it methodically, gets all the green waste out, and leaves the yard clear enough for photos or for the next owner to start again. He does not take household contents or shed junk, so that needs sorting separately.
With so many subdivided blocks, a lot of Thornbury jobs are down a shared driveway or behind a front unit. That is fine, but the trailer can’t sit across someone else’s car for an hour.
Let Ross know if the drive is shared and when it is usually clear. He will load from the street if that is simpler, and he sweeps the driveway before he goes so the neighbours are not left with the mess.
Most Thornbury fruit trees and vines are pruned in winter while they are dormant, which means a lot of households have a pile of cuttings at exactly the same time. Book the collection for straight after you prune, and it is gone before spring growth starts and the pile turns into a weed nursery.
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.
