Landscaping with Existing Trees
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I need some advice for a really big landscaping job. We are building a house on about 1 1/2 acres (150' frontage X 350' deep) of beautiful wooded ground in coastal Rhode Island. The land is surrounded on the north, south, and west sides by old stone walls, and also has a stone wall that cuts the lot in half across the middle. The house nestles on the back half of the lot between the stone walls. It is beautiful with maple, native American holly, oak, poplar, and some things we haven't figured out yet.
Now the problems -- the lot is also covered with briars bushes of some kind. The builder mowed them down last spring but they are coming back in force. Any ideas about the best way to get rid of them would be appreciated.
The second problem is of more concern. The land slopes fairly evenly from the rear to the road frontage (about 25 feet over the 350' length). The front half of the lot (in front of the center stone wall) will be left to slope naturally down to the street, but I want to level about 80' behind the center stone wall for gardens, etc. However, there are a number of trees in this area that I really don't want to lose in the process. My question (finally) -- can I surround the trees with a stone retaining wall and fill in around them with soil. There roots would be buried anywhere from 3 to 5' below the surface, but the trunk would be clear to the original ground level. I have seen this done, but don't know if there are risks associated with it.
I would appreciate any information you might have on this.
Thanks.
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(post #13851, reply #1 of 43)
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sgscott -- the tried & true, time-tested wisdom re trees: no more than a few inches of soil, mulch, whatever, should be added on top of what's already there, because there are zillions of roots very close to the surface which are essential for water, and, even more important, oxygen intake. I believe that having the roots buried as deep as you indicate would literally smother them . . . .
(post #13851, reply #2 of 43)
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NO!!!! Don't fill around the trees if you really want them to stay. That amount of fill will surely kill the trees. Contact a local CERTIFIED ARBORIST to examine the site and provide some, if any, recommendations for preserving these trees and make your gardens. A CERTIFIED ARBORIST has the knowledge to let ypu know if it will work or not. They may be able to vertical mulch the area or install tubes filled with vermiculite or ROOTS to get the oxygen down to the root level. Making a stone wall out from the tree does not do much good since the roots are still being covered.
(post #13851, reply #3 of 43)
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sgsott,
In my experience, different trees have different tolerances to being buried: Many trees that do well in soggy ground will survive a foot of soil over the roots. For example: I added 1-3 feet of soil in a field, surrounding a large black walnut with up to three feet of soil. I hoped it would die, but after 6 years the darn thing is still doing just fine. An American elm nearby failed after 3 years. Both of these trees tolerate soggy ground. I expect your trees prefer well-drained uplands soils.
I have seen landscaping accomplished to raise the soil around mature trees by building tree wells around the existing trees such that a large area around these trees is still at the original grade. You must make sure that there is a drainage path out of these wells; if these wells turn into mini ponds, the trees will drown.
(post #13851, reply #4 of 43)
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See this article at Garden Gate on raising soil around existing trees:
Garden Gate Article
(post #13851, reply #5 of 43)
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About those thorny bushes. . . . I'm in Connecticut, where we have *tons* of Japanese barberry. It's a very thorny bush with small, round leaves (maybe 1/2" across). Around this time of year, it will have berries that are shaped like skinny footballs. They are probably still green, but will turn red soon. There's a picture of the leaves and berries at this site (you will have to scroll down until you see "Berberis thunbergii"):
http://www.balliol.ox.ac.uk/quad/index.htm
Japanese barberry is often found in open woods and at woodland edges. It's a major nuisance in nature preserves, since it shades out native plants. If Japanese barberry is what you have, then removing it will be doing the environment a favor.
To get rid of it, you can pull the bushes out by the roots, one by one. This isn't as bad as it sounds -- they don't have terribly strong root systems. For the larger bushes, it's helpful to cut off most of the branches first (so the thorns aren't in your way), then to tackle the roots with a tool, such as a mattock.
The alternative approach is herbicide. I don't like spraying herbicide around; instead, I cut the stems close to the ground, then apply a little herbicide to the stumps with a paintbrush. I've used Roundup concentrate; it seems to take two applications to kill barberry. There are herbicides specifically designed for brushy weeds that might work better, but I haven't experimented with them.
Other thorny plants common in this area include multiflora rose and blackberry. For both of these, I would use herbicide. Their roots are not easy to remove.
Good luck!
(post #13851, reply #6 of 43)
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I'd forgotten that article -- very helpful!
(post #13851, reply #7 of 43)
Japanese barberry is a noxious invasive that is taking over major sections of Northeast woodlands. The harm this species does is more widespread than purple loosestrife. Birds like the berries, so they spread very quickly. They SHOULD be banned from sale and cultivation, but are very popular (because they grow so easily), so the greenhouse lobby has blocked efforts to control them.
Land trusts have used blow torches to kill barberry on a large scale
If you like the look of barberry, try boxwood instead.
I was appalled to see two different articles in the most recent FG recommending barberry. Shame on them!
(post #13851, reply #9 of 43)
Hi, Landguardian, and welcome to the forum. Please note that Fine Gardening is a national magazine, while many of the "non-native invasives" are only regionally problematic. FG has done agood job of pointing out when a potential invasive is mentioned in their articles. The Japanese Barberry is indeed invasive in some parts of the country, but not everywhere. We plant it here in PNW regularly and enjoy it; it doesn't reseed itself here. No shame on me and, in my mind, no shame on Fine Gardening.
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
(post #13851, reply #10 of 43)
Indeed. I've always been amazed that, as *soon* as I cross from TN into NC, there's what seems to be escaped miscanthus on the side of the road. Miscanthus is a problem in some places, but it's not here. It's amazing what a couple of hundred or fewer miles can make in whether or not something is invasive.
Jeana
Never try to baptize a cat.
(post #13851, reply #11 of 43)
I don't see it around here either, but miscanthus and burning bush seem to spread pretty aggressively up in the mountains. I've rarely seen a seedling from my buddleia either, though I know they're a big problem on the west coast. I've only had them come up in the ash circle where we've had a bonfire.
Speaking of seedlings, remember when I asked you about epimedium seedlings? During the past week I've noticed about a gazillion seedlings in and around a deep yellow one that you gave me a few years ago. They're definitely seedlings and not runners, because I only recognized that they're epis when they developed their first true leaf. I thought the parent was Frohnleiten, but that's a hybrid, right? So is it a fertile hybrid or is the parent something else? Maybe pinnatum ssp colchicum?
North Carolina - zone 7
North Carolina - zone 7
(post #13851, reply #18 of 43)
I tripped over this site last week. I only found two bright yellow epi's and I have both. I think I gave you the right ID on the one I brought this year (I think it's close to the stone wall). I'll look at them again and see if I'm right.
Edited to add the link: http://www.johnjearrard.co.uk/plants/epimedium/epimedium.html
Jeana
Never try to baptize a cat.
Edited 4/16/2009 10:13 pm by Jeana
(post #13851, reply #12 of 43)
Barberry is invasive here. I was surprised to find a couple of them coming up at the edge of our woods a couple years ago, at least a mile from any other possible plant. We don't grow it, and our couple of neighbors that close don't have it.
(post #13851, reply #19 of 43)
The author of one of the articles recommending barberry is in Conn., where barberry is a terrible problem. A reader would assume that barberry is not a problem in the state where the author presides if he or she is featuring it in their garden. So, in this case at least, FG has not adequately warned readers that this is an aggressive invasive in Conn.
Land Guardian
(post #13851, reply #20 of 43)
That's not a fact, it's an opinion. You're certainly entitled to it, and I'm not going to shout that such over-the-top rhetoric SHOULD be banned. I'm just sick and tired of histrionic arguments. They've plagued, bedevilled and poisoned our politics for way too long, they have done more to make people defensive and push back aginst the kind of change you want and I will do all I can to defend against their destroying a wholly enjoyable, educational and functional forum like this one. Please, save your ranting for somewhere else.
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
(post #13851, reply #21 of 43)
sorry, Marty, but landguardian's post is not just an opinion concerning japanese barberry being invasive in Connecticut-- see: http://nbii-nin.ciesin.columbia.edu/ipane/ctcouncil/CT_Invasive_Plant_List.htm
as for the FC article/author: perhaps future articles might point out whether the plants they mention might be invasive in various parts of the US. otherwise it seems to imply that there isn't a potential problem, and many readers might assume it's all right to plant. of course, a wise gardener would research this subject for his/her own neck of the woods. but how many folk buy stuff at their local nurseries, which often sell invasives or zone-unsuitable plants, because they figure the nursery must know what it is doing? euonymous is a great example around here.... grrrr.
that said, this IS a great forum. long may it remain so!!
(post #13851, reply #22 of 43)
Roxanna, I'm sorry, I may not have said it clearly enough. I had mentioned earlier in the thread that I recognized Barberry to be problematic in some parts of the country. It' so frustrating that plants we love to use in one place are a pest somewhere else. As Karen noted, we shouldn't be planting Buddleias here any more because they are turning up all over the place. I love them, but it hurts to see them coming up in wild places along the McKenzie and Willamette Rivers.
My statement about opinion referred to his assumption that Fine Gardening hasn't done enough. I can't say that I believe he's wrong entirely. I'm just really tired of the judgemental tone. I believe it was Marshal McLuhan who said, "the medium is the message." This person's medium is the harangue, the diatribe, loaded with accusation, shame, and calls to ban things. I listen to that and I listen to Rush Limbaugh and, so help me, I can't tell the difference.
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
(post #13851, reply #23 of 43)
pax, Marty, please! i certainly don't want to be lumped in with Rush-type rantings! (can't stand that man) certainly, as you say, different areas of the country have different invasive/noxious plants that are fine & dandy in other locations.
i wonder why the barberry doesn't seed itself where you are...? how nice for you!! they are miserable (albeit handsome) plants, and here in Mass are actually banned, i believe. but there are many old plantings of this in the state, so i don't know how much good the ban is! and they are prolific seeders here. there was one planted at our present house as part of the original landscaping. i loathe the thorniness of them with a passion, so i composted the bloody thing a few years ago and am so happy it is gone. =)
guess the Garden of Eden was the only place where everything imaginable grew happily and beautifully, and nothing was noxious or invasive! le sigh....
(post #13851, reply #24 of 43)
Peace indeed, Roxanna. I've enjoyed your postings enormously. I am a little surprised that Barberries don't seed out here too because they grow so well here and look so happy. Possibly they need that severe winter chill that we just don't get here. The thorniness is indeed a drawback, though I don't mind the Barberry's as much as Pyracantha and Elaeagnus thorns. Being a landscaper by trade I guess I've just grown accustomed to them over the years.
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
(post #13851, reply #25 of 43)
The only understory plant "naturally" growing in the woods here is barberry. I probably have at least a thousand plants on my property, despite chainsawing and digging. People get all excited about "non-native invasives" but the problem is not so much that they are invasive, it is that the deer have eaten absolutely everything else. The arboretum in town was waging war on the barberry too of course until they discovered that the only spring ephemerals they still had were the ones growing underneath the barberry. Now they are leaving it in hopes of protecting what few trout lilies etc. they may yet have. Talk about things out of balance :(
zone 6 gardening in the woods with 30,000 deer
zone 6 gardening in the woods with 30,000 deer
(post #13851, reply #26 of 43)
You touch on a point I've been trying to make locally for years. So many of my clients want me to plant "all-natives." That works in downtown where there aren't any deer, but almost all of our native shrubs are deer browse. And if you really want to raise a stink just suggest that the deer population get thinned out a bit.
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
(post #13851, reply #27 of 43)
That's almost the opposite of here. Natives are pretty much left along by deer and just about everything else. It's the intro's that get eaten. But you have mulies there and they're probably a wee bit hungrier.
Jeana
Never try to baptize a cat.
(post #13851, reply #28 of 43)
No mulies here, they hang out on the other side of the mountains. And my apologies, deer do eat immigrants too, just not all of them.
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
(post #13851, reply #29 of 43)
And what they don't eat, they break.
North Carolina - zone 7
North Carolina - zone 7
(post #13851, reply #30 of 43)
And then they rub their new antlers up and down the lilacs so that the entire trunk dies from lack of bark and all those baby lilac flower buds dry up and turn brown right where they are !
(sniffle)
zone 6 gardening in the woods with 30,000 deer
zone 6 gardening in the woods with 30,000 deer
(post #13851, reply #31 of 43)
The deer issue is one I don't quite understand. If someone turned that many cows, horses or sheep loose in the same area there would be an absolute uproar about overgrazing and the negative impact on the environment, but when it's deer, even when thee result is a lot of disease and the resulting premature death of a number of them, no one wants to intervene. Can it be chalked up simply to the Bambi factor?
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
(post #13851, reply #33 of 43)
I really do think it's the Bambi factor. No one cared before that movie.
Jeana
Never try to baptize a cat.
(post #13851, reply #34 of 43)
They've done some thinning around here on a limited scale. Unfortunately these were not the same population that plagues my neck of the woods.
http://www.dukeforest.duke.edu/management/wildlife.htm
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1208523.html
North Carolina - zone 7
North Carolina - zone 7
(post #13851, reply #35 of 43)
Our problem with deer is not with the populations in the woods, which are still predated by cougar and coyote; our problem is the ones that move into the residential neighborhoods on the edge of town (what they call the urban/wildlands interface zone). I think part of the population control in the woods is because the excess moves to town for the easy eats (kinda like people in that regard).
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
Edited 4/22/2009 3:16 pm by the country gardener
Marty
"The plants have been good to us." Lester Hawkins
(post #13851, reply #36 of 43)
They want to control Duke Forest deer populations to what they consider an optimal size because it's the teaching and research 'lab' for the Forestry School and other environmental studies. I guess they decided that if the herds continued to grow, they'd only be able to study the effects of deer overcrowding. Just a side effect that it also helps the adjacent neighborhoods, and there are many that back up against that 7000 acres (divided into 6 main tracts of land over 3 counties). I'm not adjacent to any of it, but that's OK. We've instituted a few seasonal controls of our own (friends who bow hunt).
North Carolina - zone 7
North Carolina - zone 7
(post #13851, reply #37 of 43)
I have had Lyme and erlichiosis both. One will cripple you, physically and mentally, and the other will just kill you. Lucky me, the medicine worked. But it doesn't for too many people. I would bet one in every 10 people in my town have or had Lyme. My kids' doctor has had Lyme for 7 years and can't get rid of it. If it were bears or cougars playing havoc with public health, there would be national headlines and professional hunters. And still people oppose hunting -- I am not joking about the 30,000 deer in my area.
zone 6 gardening in the woods with 30,000 deer
zone 6 gardening in the woods with 30,000 deer