10 foot conifer

[novicegardener]

Hello, hoping someone on here can give me some advice
We've got an unruly hedge that we inherited from the last owners. It's got a few different plants in it, but one of them is a conifer that's grown far too tall (10 feet) and it's roots are draining the nearby lawn of moisture. We're going to tidy up the rest of the hedge, but want to get rid of this tree. The question is how. We're happy to hire tools etc, but do we simply cut the tree down to a stump and leave it there (I believe the roots will die off but not sure how long that'll take), or try and get the roots out......? We've looked at getting someone in, but we're having other work done so really need to do this ourselves.

Any advice welcome.

You need a stump grinder. You can probably hire one, but unless you know what you are doing it's probably best just to get a tree surgeon in to do it. Grinding one stump would not be very expensive.

Ten feet isn't really very high. If you can saw off lower branches, then work your way up. Do you have a power saw?

We had two conifers about 25foot high taken down, took two men all day (including shredding branches) and cost £350.

We were going to hire a power saw, so we'll have one of those, yes. We would hire someone ideally, but just can't this time around

Actually Ferguson is right, ten feet is quite small. You should be able to dig out the roots yourself without too much difficulty. Get a mattock or pick axe onto it.