Poppy27 wrote:
I'm a novice gardener and have just started working on my garden and
have found a big tree stump in a large flower bed area that I was
intending to dig over and cover with decorative stones (as I would
like a low maintainence garden!). The stump is about a foot higher
than the soil level and I can't afford to have a professional remove
it. I'm also reluctant to dig it out as I understand this is a very
hard (and sometimes long) job. So, what are the other options? Can
I chop it down a bit more (to soil level) and then cover the whole
area (and it) with stones or will this cause problems later on? Is
it also necessary to try to remove all the roots from the ground
before covering - will they also cause problems later on?

I have two other trees on the other side in a flower bed area that are
cut down to about 4 ft (so I'm hoping to also be able to cut them down
to ground level and cover them as well). Any advice welcome.

I've had good results using a splitting maul and/or wedge to split old stumps
down to below ground level. If you split off little chunks at a time, it goes
pretty smoothly.