Lady Lesley

He's got youth on his side and compared to us oldies he is super human

Dave is strong but there's only one of him. I'm not that strong say half a man. But if we wait until August our son will be down and he's as strong as 2 men. That 32 inch laurel could make a great center stump. It already is an interesting shape even as a stump. It's been cut down in sometime in its long life but had regrown when we inherited it. I cant see Dave going for it but if dig the rubbish away from the base and start exposing roots etc - we'll see what happens.

Morning Dan. Our back garden has a gentle slope but our neighbours garden is flat. At the bottom of our garden both our garden and our neighbours garden are the same level - but as you walk up the slope in our back garden our garden becomes steadily higher than our neighbours until at top there's around an 18 inch difference. Our neighbour is even older than us (we're 68 and 63) so it's down to us to erect a fence - but first we need remove around 25 tree stumps. We considered a mini digger at first but our neighbour has built his shed and woodstore very close to the fence line and only 15 to 18 inches from the stumps we need to remove. We're worried using a digger could destroy his shed and woodstore foundations and we'd then end up having to renew both of them. This is the same neighbour who's piled rocks, bricks and soil up trying to bring the side of his garden level with ours - but in the process he's also buried the bottom the original post and wire fence. I still don't understand why he tried to raise the level of his garden because the piece he's raised is only 18 inches wide and the rest of his garden is now is now lower than the bit he's raised up. I know it's a nightmare.

The gardens of the house we've moved into had been neglected for 16 years plus. The trees etc were so closely packed that we didn't know there was a 12 foot pond hiding in the middle until our dog came back with wet legs. We were faced with 20ft long brambles and ivy like I've seen before. We like trees and are thinning the trees out so we can see them as individual trees. We have stumps spread over 3 separate gardens. We have a good 25 smallish stumps running parallel to and just a foot away from where we need to erect a fence. We know there's rocks, bricks and wire down below the soil level because our next door neighbour has buried them in an attempt to raise the level of his garden. Those stumps need to come out and and I suspect it will take us a day to just get rid of the rubbish around the stumps first. Then there's stumps where we need to make a turning circle. The rest are more trip hazards between other trees. As for the 2 large stumps, one is close to the house so I think we should just flatten it to the height of the soil or just above soil height and put a big pretty planter on the top so it looks like it's meant to be there. The other large stump is where we're planning to put our raised beds, so flattening it will work and it's out of the way so we'll tackle that one last. We've still to finish one side of the front garden and that involves removing more trees and most of them are laurels.

Thanks Trigger Andy. I'm listening and thank you for taking the time to reply. Both large stumps are dead and they aren't in the way so I think we'll concentrate on the smaller stumps first and pretend the large ones aren't there. Maybe later we'll be able to take them down to ground level and leave them like that. Thanks again Lesley

Thanks OpenSpaceMan. We only have 2 days a week and hiring a machine for weekend after weekend involves a lot of travelling plus rain could stop play. We thought that if we had a machine we could take our time and wouldn't feel we had to work until we dropped. Thanks for the video clip as well. Dave has dug a few stumps out and it's long hard work plus you're left with a stump that's too heavy to carry. We also burnt one stump using charcoal but that took days. We get heavy winds and expect to see at least two 80mph plus winds per season so people with the necessary skills in the tree department are always busy and busy people tend to be expensive. We've plenty of experience with chainsaws, munchers and log splitters etc but stump grinders are new to us. Looks like I'll be the one getting the soil away from the base of the stumps and Dave will be fighting with the grinder. Most people seem to think we're taking on too much. I hope we aren't.

I currently have over 60 stumps to get rid of. 2 large ones around 30" to 36" in diameter, 3 around 15" in diameter with the rest between 4" and 10". The larger stumps are hard wood and the smaller ones are mostly soft wood. I will have other stumps over the next couple of years so I want to buy a stump grinder but only have a budget of £1500/1550, which limits me to a walk behind. I've looked at machines 13hp to 15hp and from what I've read I prefer the Lumag. Problem is I don't know anything about the engine they fit in the Lumag and I'm concerned about maintenance and parts availability. I'm okay with basic maintenance but I'd appreciate your thoughts on whether the Lumag a reliable machine or am I wasting my money.