Stump Grinding in Inglewood, Nashville

Inglewood stumps are wider than the tree looked

Here is the thing that surprises people on these streets. A quarter-acre-plus lot - the median in Inglewood is about 0.28 acres, against 0.17 to 0.20 in the streetcar blocks south of the river - meant the oaks planted when this farmland was subdivided had room to grow outward instead of upward. Eighty or ninety years later the trunk you had taken down at forty-two inches sits on a root plate eight or ten feet across, and the flare rolls out sideways under the drive on one side and under a brick garden wall on the other.

That is why a quote given over the phone from a trunk measurement is usually wrong here. The visible stump is the small part. What determines the afternoon is how far the buttress roots run, what they run under, and whether the customer wants them taken out or left in place. A stump ground flush in the middle of a lawn still leaves four ridges radiating out of it, and on a mown Inglewood lawn those ridges are exactly what people phone back about.

Jackson Park covenants and no gate for a stump grinder

When Newman Cheek opened Jackson Park he wrote covenants into it: plans approved before building, brick or stone outside with no wood, and outbuildings held back from the street. Those rules produced a very particular problem for us eighty years on. A brick house built to a brick garden wall does not have the casual timber side gate that a frame bungalow has, and there is no cheap way to make a temporary opening in a masonry wall.

So on Hedgewood, Winding Way and the curved streets around them the machine route is usually the long way round the block face, down a drive and across the back lawn rather than through anything. We look for the widest clear span on the property - often between the corner of the garage and a fence return - and plan a single crossing on mats rather than four passes over wet turf. Where there is genuinely no route, the last option is the one nobody likes but it does exist: a compact machine lifted in over a low wall section that comes down and goes back up the same day.

Grinding the conifer screens the 1940s houses came with

Along with the oaks, Jackson Park houses were landscaped with evergreen screens - white pine, Norway spruce and cedar planted to separate one brick house from the next. Those are now sixty and seventy feet tall, and when one blows over or is taken out for light, the stump behaves nothing like the hardwood next to it.

Conifer stumps are full of resin. The wheel gums up, the chip comes off wet and sticky instead of dry, and any of it that lands on a light-coloured drive or a limestone step leaves a stain that does not wash off with a hose. We sheet hard surfaces before starting on a pine or spruce for exactly that reason. The other habit worth knowing is that pines carry a deep central root rather than a broad plate, so the grind goes down more than out - the opposite shape to the oak twenty feet away, and a different length of job.

Root grinding where a 1950s drive sits on an oak plate

Half the driveways on Norvel, Shelton and Stratford were poured in the 1950s in four-inch unreinforced sections, and where a white oak or willow oak was left standing beside one, the laterals have spent seventy years lifting the slab section nearest the trunk. People usually want the concrete replaced and assume the tree work is trivial.

It is not, but it is straightforward if it is sequenced right. We take the stump and then work the laterals inside the footprint of the new pour, going below the depth of the base course so there is nothing left to swell or rot under the fresh slab. Outside the pour line we leave them, because a root taken out beyond where it matters is just a hole to fill. If the tree beside the drive is staying, we say clearly how much of its root system can go before the tree becomes a liability instead of an asset. That conversation is better had before the concrete crew arrives than after.

What the ash trees mean for stump work in Inglewood

Emerald ash borer has been confirmed in Davidson County since 2014, and every untreated North American ash in this county is on a countdown. Inglewood's 1930s-50s planting included ash in the mix, and ash is on Metro's prohibited list now precisely because of the borer.

A dead ash grinds easily - by the time it comes out the wood is dry and light and the wheel flies through it. The problem is timing. Ash left standing two or three years past death loses its bark, then its limb structure, and becomes genuinely dangerous to fell, which pushes the cost of getting it down far above the cost of grinding what is left. If there is a dead ash in the back corner of your lot, the cheapest version of this job is the one that happens this year.

What we check on an Inglewood quote visit

• How far the buttress roots run from the collar, measured rather than guessed
• Whether the widest crossing point is beside the garage, off the drive or across the front lawn
• Masonry walls and brick piers within reach of the wheel path, flagged and worked by hand at the last few inches
• Whether a new drive or pad is going over the void, which sets the depth
• Resinous conifer stumps identified so hard surfaces get sheeted first
• Surface ridges the customer wants gone, quoted separately from the stump itself