In message , John Hatpin
writes
In the process of transforming our front garden, we've come across a
pretty elderly quince that defies all attempts to remove it. With
plenty of patience and secateurs, we've cut it down to about a foot
above ground level, and repeatedly sprayed it with weedkiller, so it's
mostly dead.

You have made your life more difficult. Dead tree like things are a lot
easier to prise out manually if you leave a nice strong 4-5 foot trunk
on top of the roots. Then you have something to really get hold of and
provide leverage.

But digging the thing out is proving to be impossible. It's a mass of
small, tough roots - the spade won't cut them, and it's firmly
implanted in the soil. Snipping through all those roots would take
months of hard labour.

Heavier boots and an axe might allow you to make some progress. But take
care - a sharp axe is not fussy what it cuts through.

We've got it down to about 6' x 2',

??? What size is it? WxHxD

Short of leaving it for a year or two and letting it rot (which
forestalls all our plans for the front garden for that time), is there
any quicker way of getting the thing out?

Stump grinder is probably the fastest option. An old pear tree stump in
my garden took about 15 years to rot down naturally.

To make matters worse, we've got a much larger one in our back garden,
and we were hoping to uproot that too in the current season, to free
up the area for other things. That's bounded on three sides by a
lawn, with a concrete path across the fourth.

Please advise. We're despairing.

You might be better off getting someone with the right tools in to deal
with both of them together.

Regards,
--
Martin Brown