Trees in the wrong place!

I like trees but like you had to cut down a eucalyptus which was given to us as no more than a twig, but rapidly grew like jack and the beanstalk.

What does worry me though were we live, the road through to the shops is lined with trees and the leaves are piling up and being the sort of person who has many a slip in the past, I am s**t scared of going over on the damp slippery carpet of leaves.

We had to cut down a Leylandii hedge that was blocking all the light from our living room when we moved into this house. My DH left part of it to deaden the noise from the road, but there is one by the garden gate which is now so tall and bushy that it is making access difficult. I have asked my DH to cut it down but he says he will trim it instead. I really don't think that will help much. I dislike Leylandii intensely.

Planting Leylandii should be illegal!

Agreed - although we had one huge specimen that hosted so many birds and owls too. But .... I am also always surprised when people buy houses with large trees or hedges that shade their garden or some rooms- and then complain bitterly about it. People who bought the new bungalow next to our mature mixed tree hedge- complained about it day in, day out- as soon as they moved in. And yet that hedge was there when they first came to see the bungalow, when they came to see it again, the day they decided to buy it, and the day they signed the contract- and no way were we going to cut it for them- as we didn't want to see the new bungalow- as we were used to looking over fields.

Which was there first , the tree or the Tarmac path ?

Is it me, or do trees and hedges for that matter, grow faster and a lot bigger than they used to?

eucalyptus trees grow faster in this country than in their native Australia, I think it is because we have more rain. I knew it was time to get rid of ours when my neighbour across the road, who lives in a bungalow , said she could see the top of our eucalyptus tree, which was in our back garden, when she was lying in bed! ( do the sums- bed, bungalow, road, tall house!)

well yes, in as much that privet and yew have been largely replaced by ... faster growing species.

I am very, very loathe to cut down trees, but this year I had a tall yew cut down in the garden. It shaded half the garden most of the day, shaded one corner so thoroughly nothing I tried would grow there and half the lawn was 90% moss. I replaced it with a silver birch, I always replace trees I cut down.

I have spent the whole summer wondering why I didn't have it cut down years ago. The grass is as moss free as it can be, I have planted a rockery in the dark corner, and it is doing well and the extra sunlight sets off superbly the huge hazel tree at the end of the garden, which I would never, ever cut down.

We had to cut down two conifers (they were there when we bought) as one was leaning onto the other , since they are gone the sun now shines through the other trees and makes the whole dark corner of our garden light up, I've now planted primroses , bulbs and hardy cyclamen there and intend on some 'white' planting to lighten it even more .

I wish we'd done it years ago as it lifts the whole bottom of the garden.

We had a forty foot Norway Spruce about ten feet from the back wall of our previous house. It had started life as an indoor Christmas tree many years before we bought the place. The roots were growing across the lawn and surfacing through the grass, and I started to worry about where else the roots might be going, so we reluctantly took it down. Like others have said, we got far more light into the garden, but it was always full of lovely birds - goldcrests, greenfinches, goldfinches, a visiting sparrowhawk and even, one bad winter, a waxwing! They never came back, even though there were other trees in the garden. The subject of trees is very emotive, even when they are lining roads and are not in your garden. Here in one of our leafier suburbs, the council decided to cut down some trees in a road where the roots were causing a nuisance. You've no idea what a broohaha it has caused, even though they were going to replace them with less troublesome species. There have been petitions and letters to the paper and a proper war of words. I expect the council were fed up of being sued by people who had fallen over the heaving pavements.

We have some kind of conifer in our small front garden which was about as high as our house. It needed taking down, but a family of wood pigeons had a nest in it and raise brood after brood after brood of squabs.

We tried to take it down in October 2014 only to find another lot of babies in residence so left it standing. This year in August I hatched (!) a Cunning Plan and had DH cut a lower branch off each week. The wood pigeons eventually took the hint and rehomed themselves and the tree gradually disappeared from the bottom up until only an umbrella-shaped top was left.

This now attracts a flock of long tailed tits every morning about 11 o'clock when they appear and chatter away and feed on the little insects they seem to find in the remaining branches before flying off after about an hour.

I can't win!

Conifers can be a menace in gardens! We had one alongside our drive which was growing so tall and bushy it was blocking light from the garden and looked out of place, frankly.

We had it severely lopped by a rather expensive tree surgeon a few years ago and it made a big difference - but now it has redoubled its growing efforts and is if anything bigger and bushier than before...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-34749065

Tree of the Year in the wrong place.

Oh, trust you to find an article to make us all feel guilty, durhamjen!

Just buy some trees through the Woodland Trust, Ana, to make up for it, feeling guilty, that is.

No, I won't, as I haven't actually got rid of any trees in my garden.

Well, you can buy some anyway, to make you feel good. Just in case you then decide to get rid of that conifer altogether.

I think Ana meant joke guilt , hard to feel truly guilty about taking down a tree in the wrong place.

We took out a fifty foot conifer in the back garden last year, no guilt at all, it was dark and brooding and had to go.

Yes, roses, I did realise.
I hope the tree you took down did not have a preservation order on it, like the one that vampire talked about on another thread.

I pull up dozens of seedling trees every year: ash, downy birch, sycamore, spruce, wild cherry, holly. If anyone wants any let me know and I'll post some to you.

Same here with Staghorn Sumac seedlings - the darned things spring up all over the place!

The problem with cypress and leylandii is that when you lop the top off they grow outward not upward and can be more of a bally nuisance than when they are growing upward!