Kathleen Sayce, originally written in 2008, updated 2024
Living with trees is like living with elephants: both are darling when young, beautiful in maturity, and at times awesomely dangerous. Sometimes it takes a severe storm to remind us trees can also be fatally damaged. Responsible tree care includes knowing when to take an older tree out. One of the saddest days of my life was the day I realized that five old trees (redwood, Sitka spruce, western red cedar, and Douglas-fir) had to come out of my yard. They had grown too big for safety.
Planting a tree is committing to multigenerational management, which is to say the sapling you plant today may become a problem for your children or grandchildren.
The most successful trees to plant are disease and insect resistant; grow slowly over most of their lives; do not have toxic seeds or leaves; do not break off branches in most storms; may provide showy leaves, flowers or fruit some time during the year; and tolerate winter wet/cold and summer drought/heat. No one tree perfectly meets all these criteria, but many come close.
The following is a summary of the ‘right tree in the right place with the right care’ wisdom, so that you can plant new trees that will do well for many decades.
Basic considerations:
- Don’t let ivy grow into trees; ivy slowly kills them, impairing growth and adding to the canopy area; ivy-swathed trees may tip over due to wind-throw and broken roots, or die girdled under vines.
- Pay attention to soil conditions. If you live on a dry site, don’t plant trees that like wet feet; if you live in wetlands, don’t plant trees that need dry feet.
- Learn the signs of danger trees, especially for large trees, and remove these individuals when needed. Leaning, fungal diseases, dead tops, large broken branches: these are all signs a tree is struggling.
- Fall is a good planting time for trees; you’ll water less next summer. Tree roots establish quickly over winter, and trees begin growing well the next spring when fall-planted.
- Supplement with mulch instead of pavement, rocks or turf for improved tree health in confined spaces, but know that when surrounded by building foundations, paved roads, driveways and sidewalks, trees are not as healthy as growing on open land.
- Pick locations that are not close to buildings. There’s nothing sadder than seeing a tree planted within eight feet of a building. The roots can’t grow under the building; half the canopy will not have room to grow—there’s a wall in the way.
- For big trees near new structures, watch for signs of dieback after construction. The bigger the tree, the farther roots spread, and the more sensitive that tree is to root damage.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with planting native trees in yards. The problem is space. Most grow very rapidly to quite large sizes; additionally, several don’t live very long (cottonwood, shore pine and red alder, in particular). This means, in terms of managing big elephants in small yards, that they quickly reach impressive sizes, and then die earlier than expected.
There are numerous websites to help select yard and street trees. For the maritime Pacific Northwest, Great Plant Picks is a good place to start for yard trees (https://www.greatplantpicks.org/. Navigate to Plant Lists / Helpful Lists / Trees for recommended trees for yards).
