Stump Grinding on Harding Place and Parmer Avenue, Belle Meade TN
Two minutes. This end of the city is the closest work we do, and yes, Harding Place, Parmer, Malone, Evelyn and both Brookfields are all covered. Photographs come back priced the same day, and midweek slots here often open at short notice.
Nothing fits down the side yard to reach the stump
These are the oldest and smallest lots in Belle Meade, and the arithmetic is unforgiving. Eight to twelve feet between the house wall and the neighbor's line, a gas meter and a downspout in the middle of it, and a stump in the back corner that everything has to reach past. Two contractors have probably already looked at it, measured the gap, and taken the call no further.
That is the whole reason the thing is still there. It is not big, it is not complicated, and on an open lawn it would be a forty-minute job. Here it is a question of what physically gets past the corner of the house, and then what happens to the chips once they are produced somewhere a truck cannot reach.
A narrower grinder, and the trade that comes with it
A standard walk-behind grinder wants roughly a yard of clear width to pass. Where the side yard offers less than that, or where a stepped path and a meter box eat into it, we bring a narrow-track machine instead. It goes where the other one cannot, and it cuts more slowly, and both of those facts belong in the quote rather than in a surprise on the day.
We measure the actual pinch, not the gate. Often the true bottleneck is a downpipe, an air conditioning pad or a step in the path rather than the fence line. Knowing which one it is decides the machine, and the machine decides the hours.
Water oak, sweetgum and the pear stumps everyone regrets
The planting on these streets tells you exactly when they were built out. Silver maple and water oak went in for fast shade and are now at the age where they shed limbs into small back yards. Sweetgum is here in numbers and nobody misses it once the gumballs stop. And the Bradford pears - planted everywhere in the seventies and eighties, splitting down the crotch in the first real ice storm.
Pear is easy grinding, soft and quick, but the root plate is shallow and broad relative to the trunk, so the opening ends up disproportionately wide on a small lot. Water oak is the slow one. Hackberry hides decay pockets that drop the wheel unexpectedly, so the feed stays disciplined regardless of how soft the first pass felt.
Low ground, and what 2010 is still teaching this end of town
On the first two days of May 2010, thirteen and a half inches of rain fell on Nashville and the ground floor of St. George's on Harding Pike took water. Richland Creek crested higher that week than it had since 1926, and the lower lots at this end of the city have not forgotten it.
It matters here for a small practical reason: a stump hole in low ground that is backfilled with loose grindings becomes a sump. Water finds it, it stays wet, and the settlement is worse than it would be uphill. On any lot near the low line we close the opening with soil that packs and drains rather than with the material we just produced.
The chips are not going out with the brush
Belle Meade Public Works runs curbside chipper collection three days a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and it is a genuinely good service - but it takes limbs up to four inches and it does not take plastic bags. A pile of stump grindings is neither, and a trunk section certainly is not.
So it leaves on our trailer. On these lots there is usually nowhere to stage a mound anyway; we barrow it up the side yard to the curb, load it straight into the truck, and sweep the drive and the sidewalk before we go. If you want a portion kept for a bed at the back, tell us before we start and we will set it aside on a tarp rather than run it up and down twice.
What we do in Harding Place & Parmer
Questions from the Harding Place and Parmer streets
Will Belle Meade pick up the chips from a stump grinding?
No. The city's chipper crews run Monday, Wednesday and Friday and they collect limbs up to four inches across, loose - not bagged. Ground stump material and trunk wood fall outside that entirely. Anything we produce goes on our trailer the same day, so nothing is left sitting at your curb waiting for a truck that was never coming.
My side yard is about nine feet. Is that workable?
Yes, provided the pinch point is the fence and not something fixed. Nine feet is comfortable for a narrow-track machine and we have worked considerably less. Send a photo looking down the side of the house with the gate open, and one from the back corner looking toward it, and we can tell you what fits before anybody drives over.
How close to the foundation can you grind?
Close enough for practical purposes, with care. The wheel can work within a few inches of a wall, but we slow right down near a foundation, a footing or a brick pier because we cannot see what is behind the last inch of soil. Roots running under a slab get cut back to the edge rather than chased beneath it.
How much for a stump ground in Belle Meade 37205?
For the size of tree these lots usually carry, a small stump generally runs between one hundred and one hundred seventy-five dollars, and a mid-size trunk from there up to around three fifty. A large water oak with a spread of surface roots goes higher. Send a picture with something in shot for scale and you get a firm figure, not a bracket.