Stump Grinding in Kangaroo Flat, Bendigo

A typical Kangaroo Flat stump grinding job

The call usually goes like this. Someone has bought a seventies house on the Lockwood Road side, the previous owner had a Monterey pine taken down years ago and left a butt the size of a coffee table beside the driveway. It is sprouting nothing, because pines do not, but it is in the way of the new fence line and the kids keep tripping on the roots. Can we get rid of it?

We can, and here is what happens. A stump beside a driveway on an older block is often close to the water service, the gas line and the stormwater, so we check the plans through the Before You Dig service and probe the ground around the stump before the machine goes near it. Then we look at the way in. On most post-war blocks the side gate is wide enough to walk the grinder through to the stump, and the estate lots usually have a single gate that will do; only a fully enclosed courtyard forces a rethink.

With the machine in position the cutting wheel is walked back and forth across the stump, taking off a layer at a time until the top is well below the lawn, and the main roots are chased out so nothing hard is left just under the surface. A pine that size produces a surprising heap of grindings. We rake the loose soil back into the hole, and the surplus goes on the garden as mulch, into the truck, or stays for you, whichever was agreed. The whole thing takes an hour or two, and what is left is a soft patch of ground you can rake flat, seed and forget about.

Grinding stumps on Kangaroo Flat ground

Kangaroo Flat was being dug for gold from 1853, and Crusoe Gully, on the reservoir side of the suburb, produced the district's largest nugget in 1861. That history is still in the soil. The old diggings left the ground stony and disturbed, with quartz gravel and the occasional buried brick or piece of iron from the mining days, and all of that is hard on grinder teeth. We carry spares and expect to swap them on the rises towards Big Hill more often than on the creek flats, and we never grind blind: a buried rock is found with a probe before it is found with the cutting wheel.

The flats along the Bendigo Creek and its tributaries are different again. The soil is deeper and holds water, which makes for easier grinding but soft access in a wet winter, so we bring track mats for the lawn if the ground is sodden. On the estate lots the challenge is the fill: builders' rubble and compacted clay under the turf, with services run shallower than you would expect.

Species matter too. The stumps we grind most here are pine and cypress from the old windbreaks and hedges, gums removed for safety or space, and the occasional big old plum or apricot. Cypress and pine grind cleanly and never sucker. Many of the gums planted in Bendigo gardens will reshoot from the base if simply cut flush, so grinding a gum stump deep enough to take out the crown of the root system is the only way to be sure it stays gone. Elms and some ornamental pears send suckers up from the roots for a season or two even after grinding, which we warn people about.

Depth, roots and what you can do with the spot afterwards

A standard grind goes far enough below ground level to turf over or plant shrubs. If you are laying a driveway, a slab or a fence post exactly where the stump was, tell us and we grind deeper and clear more of the root plate. Roots running away from the stump are left unless they are lifting paving; they rot down slowly and do no harm. Replanting a tree in the exact spot is worth a little patience, because the woody grindings draw nitrogen out of the soil as they break down. We recommend removing most of them, back-filling with clean soil, and planting a metre or so to the side. Turf can go down as soon as the soil has settled for a few weeks.

How we work through a stump grinding job in Kangaroo Flat

1. You send a photo or we come and look. Stumps are easy to quote from a picture with a tape measure in it, and most Kangaroo Flat stump jobs are priced without a site visit.
2. We check the underground services and probe the ground around the stump for rocks, old footings and mining rubble.
3. The grinder is brought in through the gate, the area is screened to contain chips, and the stump is ground below ground level with the main roots chased out.
4. Grindings are raked back into the hole or removed, the lawn is tidied, and if the species is a suckering one we tell you what to watch for.

Most of the stumps we grind in the suburb are left over from our own tree removal work in Kangaroo Flat, but plenty are legacies from years back, and we grind those just the same. If the tree is still standing and the question is whether it needs to come down at all, the tree lopping in Kangaroo Flat page is the place to start. The Kangaroo Flat suburb page covers everything else we do locally, and the Bendigo stump grinding service page explains the machinery. The same grinder is busy over the line in Golden Square and across town in Bendigo.

Stump grinding in Kangaroo Flat: common questions