Trees of our Choosing

When we put in the fire pit last fall, there was a very hairy section of the yard that had to be cleaned out. One by one over the past year, we started pulling out shrubs and trees to make room for a new cherry tree and pecan tree. There was no way these newbies would have room or the sun to grow with all the bushy and tall vegetation slammed into this one section of the yard. The goal is to get it back to being a shady part of the yard, but with plants and trees of our choosing rather than terrible collage that came with the house. I’m always a little sad to cut down trees in the yard, but sometimes they come back, and I have to choose what to do with them all over again.

There was a glorious Chinese Privet that the cardinals loved in the winter, but I’ve known a few botanists long enough to know that privet is evil and invasive to our area, so we finally cut down this monstrous tree-shrub that had more than tripled in size in just the few years we have lived here. It keeps trying to pop up in various areas of the yard, but the initial stump is finally rotting. I don’t actually miss it because I keep looking at the tiny cherry tree in its spot and envisioning it taller with beautiful branches and blossoms. We aggressively pull out new privet volunteers.

The two trees I was saddest to lose were a dogwood and red bud. We took them out to make room for the pecan, and now that the pecan seems to be well rooted and growing, I may just not fight the new growth on the stumps. I love a little understory growth. I’ve been pulling off all but two of the redbud leaders to try to keep it from sprawling out too much, but I haven’t decided what to do yet with the cluster of dogwood coming up.

What do you do with tree volunteers? It seems every couple days I’m pulling baby trees out of the vegetable garden and flower beds. Every now and then I’ll keep one. There’s actually some sort of cedar growing very well on the property line that I dug out of a veggie patch a few years back.