How to Cut Shrub Stumps

If your shrub has thinned, warped, grown weak with age, or even died, it may be time to remove the shrub from your landscaping. Whatever the cause of the problem, it does no good to keep a dead or dying shrub in place to detract from other thriving plants in your garden. Removing shrubs can take time and become difficult to accomplish without the right methodology and tools. Cutting your shrub down to the bare minimum will help make removal easier.

Mattock or cutting mattock
Pruning shears or hedge clippers
Shovel with sharp point
Spade
Wheelbarrow or other method to haul away debris
Topsoil
Gardening gloves
Work boots
Safety goggles

Instructions

- 1
  Trim the dead shrub of all branches and debris up to 3 feet above the ground. Place discarded branches and debris in the wheelbarrow to haul away at the end of this process. The main stalk left is the stump of the shrub.
- 2
  Dig around the stump of the shrub about 12 to 15 inches in diameter from the stump. Keep digging until you reach the roots of the stump.
- 3
  Use the mattock or cutting mattock to cut through the roots in a circle around the stump. Always use caution when working with a mattock, or cutting mattock, as it is a sharp tool.
- 4
  Trim the stump level to the ground once you have finished cutting through the roots of the stump. Using the sharp point of the shovel or the cutting end of the mattock, hack into the main stump root until it loosens in the ground.
- 5
  Pull up any cut roots, working the roots out of the soil with a spade in a careful manner.
- 6
  Fill in the empty hole where the shrub once was planted with topsoil. Haul away any debris.

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