Stump Grinding on Old Hickory Boulevard, Forest Hills
Yes, the whole Forest Hills stretch of Old Hickory Boulevard, from the Chickering Road end past City Hall to Granny White Pike - three minutes for us. Where a dry-stack wall or an old foundation sits anywhere near the stump we walk it first, then price it.
The oldest ground on Old Hickory, and the least forgiving
Old Hickory Boulevard is the southern boundary of Forest Hills and the oldest continuously built stretch inside it. The McCrory-Mayfield House at 1280 dates to around 1798 and is the oldest building left in the city; the Hibbettage at 2160 is a 1939 replica of the Hermitage. Both are on the National Register, and City Hall itself sits where the boulevard meets Hillsboro Pike.
The trees along it are older than the subdivisions elsewhere in town. Ancient white oak and chinkapin oak, black walnut, hackberry, cedar - the stock that was here when this was a pike between farms rather than a road between neighborhoods.
When one of those fails, the stump is almost never sitting in the middle of an open lawn. It is beside a mortarless stone wall that has been standing since before the Civil War, or within the setting of a listed house, or twelve feet from a road that nobody drives slowly on. The grinding is the simple part.
A dry-stack wall has nothing under it, so the grinder stays back
The stone walls along the old pikes here were laid without mortar. They stand on friction, weight and the skill of whoever set the courses, and the city treats preserving them as a real function rather than a sentiment.
What that means for us is straightforward. No machine weight within a few feet of the base, because tracked equipment vibrating alongside an unmortared wall is enough to shift a course, and once a wall bulges it does not go back without being rebuilt. Nothing gets leaned against it, nothing gets used as a wheel stop, and where a root runs under it we take the top of the root down rather than levering it out.
Where a stump genuinely sits tight to a wall, part of the job goes to a shovel. That is slower and it costs more. It is also the only version of the job that leaves the wall standing.
Two houses on the register and a lot of unlisted ones
Working on a property with real history is mostly about restraint.
On the older parcels along the boulevard we stage on the modern drive rather than an original carriage track, keep off any lawn that is part of the setting after wet weather, and ask before crossing ground nobody has driven on in decades. Old outbuilding foundations, cisterns and springhouse remains turn up on these lots and they are not always where anyone remembers. Where the owner knows of something buried, we route around it.
None of that requires an approval process for a stump - it is a courtesy and a practical matter. But if a property is listed and the work involves anything beyond the stump itself, the sensible order is to ask before, not explain after.
Old trees, canopy review, and replacement inch for inch
Because Forest Hills kept its own charter, its tree ordinance applies here rather than Metro's rules, and along this boulevard it bites hardest, since the trees are the biggest in town.
A healthy tree eight inches in caliper or more needs a permit before removal, from the owner or the contractor. The permit is free. If losing it puts the parcel under the canopy retention ratio for its zoning district, a planting plan has to be filed, and where the city approves taking down a healthy native you owe caliper for caliper back in a comparable species. Clear-cutting is not on the table at all.
Dead trees, storm-fallen trees and invasives on the state list are exempt, which covers most of what we end up grinding out here. And grinding an existing stump is outside all of it - by then the review has either happened or was never needed.
Nowhere to park a grinder trailer on a boundary road
Old Hickory Boulevard carries through traffic at speed and the verge along much of it is narrow, banked, or occupied by the very walls we are trying not to disturb.
So the trailer goes in the driveway. Where a property has no room for that, we cone well back on the approach side and keep the crew and the work on the property side of the machine, never between the equipment and the traffic. Chip discharge points into the lot.
We also avoid the morning and afternoon peaks on frontage work here, both for the obvious reason and because it is far easier to unload a machine when nobody is having to swing around it.
Old Hickory Boulevard specifics we plan around
- Distance from the nearest dry-stack wall, measured rather than estimated
- Whether the property is listed, and whether the work is inside the historic setting
- Any known cistern, old foundation or springhouse remnant on the route
- Where a trailer can sit off the pavement, since the shoulder is not an option
- Whether the tree was dead or storm-fallen, which settles the permit question
- Whether replanting is required, and where the replacement should go
- Timing around the peaks, because this road does not slow down for anybody
What we do in Old Hickory Boulevard
Nearby Forest Hills neighborhoods
Questions along the boulevard
How close to a stone wall can you actually grind?
The wheel can work within a foot or so of a wall face. The machine cannot. What limits us is where the weight and vibration sit, not where the cutter reaches, so we set up on the far side and work toward the wall rather than parking beside it. Anything in the last few inches gets done by hand, and we would rather quote that time in than skip it.
My house is on the National Register. Do I need approval for a stump?
For grinding a stump that already exists, no - there is nothing being altered. Removing a living tree is a different question, and that goes through the city's tree permit like any other property in Forest Hills. If your work is tied to a grant, an easement or a preservation agreement, check the terms of that first, because those sometimes reach further than the ordinance does.
An old oak came down across the wall in a storm. What is the order of operations?
Trunk and limbs off the wall first, carefully and by hand where they are bearing on stone, then an honest look at whether any course has moved. Only after that does a machine come anywhere near. If the wall has shifted, a stone mason should see it before we grind, because grinding beside a wall that is already compromised is how a repair becomes a rebuild.
Are the really old oaks harder to grind than newer trees?
Yes, in two ways. The wood is dense and slow, and an old white oak or chinkapin oak that has stood in one spot for a century will have grit and small stone worked into the bark and the surface roots. Soil and stone take an edge off carbide far quicker than clean wood does, so those jobs need a slower feed and often a mid-job tooth change.
Is a black walnut stump worth anything?
The trunk can be, which is why it is worth asking a tree crew about the log before it gets cut into rounds. The stump itself, once it is in the ground with soil and stone in the flare, is not something a mill will touch. By the time we are involved, the value question has usually already been settled - we are grinding what is left rather than salvaging it.