Contemplating a Tree-Ectomy
by Colleen Vanderlinden • January 29, 2009 • Trees • 14 Comments
It’s not a bad tree. It’s not dying. It’s not a nuisance. It’s not the world’s most attractive specimen, and it tends to drop lots of little branches, but that’s hardly reason to cut it down.
It does, however, make my north-facing front garden even shadier than it already is.
I’ll admit that I’m being impractical here. It’s a perfectly healthy tree that has lovely yellow leaves in the fall. But I want to grow flowers, damn it. I’m tired of trying to get hostas, ferns, and bleeding hearts to thrive here. I want Joe Pye Weed. I want Russian Sage. I want to look out my dining room window and see something. And this birch is planted smack-dab in the center of the lawn.
I’m far from being a designer. I plop things in the soil, watch them for a season (sometimes less), dig them up, replant, and repeat. I’m a plant geek. I like a plant, I buy it (or seed for it) and in it goes. Eventually, everything works out. The idea of actually planning my garden is laughable. I do admire the discipline of those of you who draw up plans, or hire landscape designers to do it for you, and then follow through on those plans. I don’t know how you do it.
The thing is, I’m also a confessed treehugger. I feel guilty for even thinking about cutting this birch down. If it were diseased, or infested with carpenter ants or something, then I wouldn’t think twice. But the damn thing is healthy. It mocks me with its flush of buds each spring. Is it wrong to hope for lightning?
Anyway, I’m throwing it out to you guys. If this were your tree, in your north-facing yard, where sun was at a premium…..would you keep it?
Yes.
But that’s because I’m a tree-hugger, too. If it’s green and thriving, let it be, is my mantra. But I do understand your desire for more sun, too.
I have a few I need to take down as well, they block sun to my gardens, are dangerously close the house and they drop HUGE branches one of which I am afraid will come crashing through the roof. So perhaps this season we’ll be removing 2-3 maples, 2-3 very large oak trees and a few very large old cherries. Kind of sad, but I’d be more sad if I they fell on my car or my home!
tough decision! Is there anyway you could dig it up? Maybe someone else wants it, or you could put it in another area? Although it does look pretty large, I suppose that would be expensive to dig it up and move it.
I’d cut it down to grow the plants I crave and then plant another tree somewhere else where it won’t be in the way!
Like Sheila, I’d cut it down and plant another somewhere else. Maybe a fruit tree?
http://www.moxiegardener.com
If my block lacked trees to give height, I would be hesitant to remove it. I do wonder, though, if your chosen replacements will thrive in that spot, which is bound to be shady anyway (I am not familiar with either plant). The tree is not being seen to advantage, as it is so disconnected from the hedge. If I decided to keep it, I would plant a dark evergreen between the hedge and tree to show up the bark and make the tree look less like a lone toothbrush. In the foreground, I might try matching the autumn and/or spring foliage colours, though I might stick to a dark ground-cover like Ajuga reptans.
Cut it down. It may be a nice tree, but it’s just a tree. It would be no different from digging up, say, a yew, except taller. People plant trees all the time, so there’s no reason to feel guilty about depriving the world of one, and it’ll bother you for the rest of your stay in this house if you don’t get rid of it and do what you really want to do with your yard.
(If it were me, I’d keep it, but that’s because I don’t want to grow flowers–and my front yard is really only useful as a playground for the neighborhood kids. My backyard, where the veggie garden is, is partly shady, and I’d have cut down some trees myself if they didn’t all belong to the neighbors.)
I think I’d limb it up high and try to work with it by planting some shade plants with color.
It would be gone in a skinny minute! Grow what you love.
I say LEAVE IT!!!
I wish I had a lot more nice healthy trees in my lawn….
There were none to begin with and all I can afford are twigs at this point LOL!
My vote is for cutting the tree down but then planting two trees somewhere else. This way you get your shade and the tree hugger is satisfied too.
I’m thinking about doing something similar by cutting down an out of control apple tree and then planting two paw paw trees.
It doesn’t seem to be well-placed. I’d cut it down and go with something smaller that would blend with flowers, a dwarf cherry maybe. Now, if you lived in my neighborhood, I’d just tell you to wait because we have a beaver living nearby that has been taking out birch and aspen like crazy. Imagine coming out into your yard one morning and where trees had been finding a bunch of gnawed toothpicks. Yikes!
“I plop things in the soil, watch them for a season (sometimes less), dig them up, replant, and repeat. I’m a plant geek. I like a plant, I buy it (or seed for it) and in it goes.”
Were we seperated at birth?
I would take out the tree, use the wood for firewood, and plant a new pretty tree somewhere else in your yard. Have you ever seen a tri-color beech tree?
LOL it’s just as I thought—y’all are as divided about this as I am! I’ll keep looking at it for a few more weeks and see if I can’t make up my mind.
Chookie—you’re right that no matter what I do, the site will always lack for light. I’m trying to get as much light as possible!
Mary—It’s definitely not well placed–the former owner of our house didn’t do us any favors with the trees they planted. We also have a humongous sugar maple in the back yard that is in a really bad spot. Think you can ship any of those beavers my way? It would save me some money
Anthony—now, that would give me a good excuse to go plant shopping. Hmm…..
Flee—Nice to hear I’m not the only one who keeps messing around with my plants! I love tri-color beeches!