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Big, Easy Trees have simple needs
Well, no, of course not. But knowing that does nothing to prevent such folks from buying the jeans anyway. And people do similar things with trees and shrubs, which explains why landscape designer Vicki Fox started a recent job by taking a chainsaw to the maples her clients had planted just three years before. "They didn’t consider the nature of what they were planting," said Fox, who studied illustration at the Philadelphia College of Art and landscape design at Longwood Gardens before launching her business (www.vickifoxdesigner.com) in 1996. "They’d planted the trees 15 feet from the house." And that’s a problem because…..? Because maples can get 50 feet wide. With 25 feet on either side of the trunk, that means a maple planted 15 feet from a house will, eventually, want to extend its branches 10 feet into the dining room. Yard = blue jeans. Maple = big belly. Capiche? Fox replaced the maples with arborvitae. That’s the tall, narrow evergreen often maligned because too many homeowners plant it in boring straight rows. Instead, Fox planted them in a zigzag to provide screening and room for a meandering path. Other faux pas? There are mainly two, said Fox: One is forgetting the sun and the other is forgetting food and water. Some plants love lots of sun; others don’t. So, choose – or modify – their locations carefully. (If there are lots of big trees, consider thinning them.) Then, add plenty of the organic material that trees use as food. That done, you can plant any tree or shrub you choose. Which, of course, doesn’t make choosing any easier. There is a lot out there. Function first Almost universally, landscape designers advise homeowners to decide how they want to use their property before choosing their plants. According to designer Steve Flanagan of Waterloo Gardens, it’s like furnishing a house: If you’re setting up a media room, you put the big-screen TV there, not in the kitchen. Similarly, people whose kids use the back yard for soccer shouldn’t plant a tree in the middle of it. "Personally, I think everyone could use a big tree in the back," said Flanagan, who has worked in Waterloo’s Exton office since 1993. "But not everyone wants that." Some people, he noted, just love to sit in the sun. Others have swimming pools and prefer to avoid filling them with leaves. For those who do want a big tree, Flanagan recommends scarlet oaks and ashes. Both are tolerant of poor soil, so they’re good choices for southeastern Pennsylvania’s clay. Also, both will eventually become the broad, solid sort of specimen trees that are ideal to dangle a child’s swing. "They grow slowly for 15-20 years," admitted Flanagan. "But after that, they do get going a bit."
Fox’s favorite big tree is the larch. "It’s stately and reaches to the sky," she said. The larch, which can reach more than a hundred feet, is shaped like an evergreen and has cones. But it’s a deciduous tree that sheds its fine needles in the autumn and produces pink flowers in the spring. One important benefit of the larch is that, when full grown, its branches are far apart. That allows enough light to pass that homeowners can grow ground covers and other shade-tolerant plants underneath. Impatient homeowners can buy large trees from a nursery, but it’s usually a waste of money. According to designer Jonathan Alderson (www.jonathanalderson.com), transplanted trees require a year to recover for every inch of trunk thickness. So, a tree with a five-inch trunk will just sit there for five years before it begins to put on any additional growth. "By that time, it’s usually been surpassed by the tree that was smaller to start, but able to recover more quickly," said Alderson, a native of England who started his U.S. career landscaping the Spiegel world headquarters near Chicago. "If you can bear waiting, buy small." And don’t put a big tree – or a tree that will be big – in the front yard unless it’s a very large front yard. In that case, put it off to the side to frame the structure, not hide it, said Fox. "You want to be able to see the front of your house," she said. "I never like it when there is a dense green wall on the front. It’s not inviting." A better place for a large tree might be a far corner of the backyard, where it will eventually be a backdrop to smaller, flowering things. Display in front; play in the rear Traditionally, front yards are landscaped for show, while back yards are places to play. Generally, that’s a sound plan, according to these designers, but it requires different sorts of plants. In the front yard, Flanagan likes mixed borders around foundations and along walks. These can include annuals or perennials, but shrubs and smaller trees are their anchors. He’s fond of black pine, a smaller evergreen that tops out at 15-20 feet. "It’s has irregular growth, kind of a windswept look," said Flanagan. He also uses viburnum, a shrub that comes in several varieties, gets 8-10 feet tall and flowers. Mixed borders are also good places for low, mounding evergreen shrubs. And azaleas and rhododendron are low maintenance and long-lived "workhorses," noted Fox. Fox recently recommended six ornamental cherry trees for the front yard of a client’s 1.5-acre suburban tract. "There are all sorts of flowering trees you can use," she said. "Cherries, plumbs and dogwoods are great. Magnolias are wonderful, too, though some of them get large and can be messy." Next to Swarthmore’s Parrish Hall is a patch of one of Alderson’s favorites – winterberry. Winterberry is an open shrub with multiple red stems and, as the name suggests, red berries that appear in winter, plus white flowers in spring. "It’s great to have plants that offer something in all four seasons," said Alderson, who also likes the river birch for its exfoliating bark. Back yards are places to relax. Fox recommends backyard destinations such as gazebos reached by paths winding through shrubbery and small trees. Near the house, consider surrounding a patio with hibiscus, which produces enormous flowers in late summer, or fragrant lilac. "Lilac is good partly for the smell and partly because it’s just a beautiful shrub," said Fox. "You’re lucky if you can get one going but, if you do, remember that it spreads." So does a belly, of course, but lilac does it so much more nicely. Home & Design May 2005
 Mark
E. Dixon
757 Upper Gulph Road
Wayne, PA 19087-2022
USA
610-971-0649
mark.dixon@att.net
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We’ll
get to the best trees and shrubs for your yard in a moment. First, let’s
consider the guy with a 42-inch belly eyeing a pair of 36-inch jeans and ask
ourselves: Is this wise?
He
also likes maples for their broad shape, fall color and because they’re native
to Pennsylvania. But Flanagan doesn’t often recommend a maple. Its crimes
include those winged seed pods and surface roots, which tend to dry out the soil
underneath. Homeowners with maples often complain that nothing will grow below
them.