Planting under trees.

I can only sympathise. My house is surrounded by pine trees and I have a holly tree that I planted that is actually in my garden. It now covers a third of my garden. I spend most of my time sweeping up pine needles, pine cones and holly leaves. On top of this the pigeons roost there and poo everywhere. It used to be worse because there used to be a sycamore tree that overhang my garden. The farmer, whose land it was in, took it down but made me pay towards it! If I had my time again I would never buy a house surrounded by huge trees. I did think about buying a garden vacuum cleaner to get all the leaves up but it might just be another gadget that I buy thinking it will make my life easier but ends up sitting in the shed. I also have a huge moss problem because of the shade. I do find that Skimmia and Ferns grow quite happily in the shade. I was going to cut the holly right back but there seem to be a lot of berries forming and I don’t want to deprive the birds of a feast. I had a beautiful rowan tree removed from the front garden because it was growing over the water supply but it’s just been replaced by self seeding hawthorn and elder. My driveway is lifting because of the pine tree but it’s in a conservation area and can’t be removed.

Would it be possible to pave the area, it could be a very comfortable sitting out area in the summer.
Just a thought.

Our previous garden was three quarters of an acre with 5 oak trees. Each year they got bigger and produced more leaves and acorns. The final year we were there we seemed to do nothing but rake up leaves. We are now in a nice bungalow with one small flowering cherry!

I agree with Visgirl. Clearing the leaves once or twice would not touch the tip of the iceberg. Our neighbours let an oak sapling grow and twelve years on it is an enormous tree producing bags and bags and bags of leaves that cover our garden, I am still clearing them from last year and they take about four years to compost down. The canopy leaves most of my garden in shade, my greenhouse is now used as storage as it gets no sun at all. Oak trees are lovely in a park but a nightmare in suburban gardens. The only thing that grows under it is ivy.

We've these, I have no idea what, under many of the big trees. Pretty red-tip glossy green leaves. I've yet to place the 400 bags of bark under all the trees, but bark makes the bushes show up well.

Here is the shrubbery today

If the neighbours trees aren't too close to your house why don't you plant some shrubs on your land? I have a mixture of sambuca Niger, Philadelphus, lilac, orange buddleia, ceonothus (prefers sun) escallonia and a couple of evergreen shrubs I have forgotten the names of but they look ok together.

Be careful.. I had a similar problem but with x2 Oak trees one huge the other the opposite side of my garden med size. Both on council land, behind our fences. As you can guess local council wouldn't do anything to reduce the canopies, we paid every 4 years or so to get them reduced, bit of a palaver, as we had to get permission, every time.
Slowly the two trees branches completely coverd our garden, it not a dinky garden it about 60 ft wide.
Completely ruined any lawn, we tried to keep.
We re turfed x3, seeded tried everything, Oaks beautiful but a nightmare, they have cost us a small fortune over the years.

We had to employ a gardener ever 2 weeks from about Oct until Spring to sort out the Tons of leaves.

Under the tree we tried to extend the boarder, that was getting bigger. Tried Bark etc Absolutely ridiculous, hate it admitted it but we ended up with Artificial Grass, it was so bad. Bark, shingle would have been a joke, garden too big.

After several years we stared seeing Cracks in the house, called in Insurance company who monitored the House for about 4 years, they found Oak Tree DNA in the foundations, both those tree where felled, as the council had no option.

Try making boarder bigger but they are invasive trees.

Best of luck.

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Self seeded weeds are pretty, in my opinion. Wild is lovely.

I'm gradually reducing the size of my lawn by planting shrubs around it under the trees at one end and allowing a meadow to grow naturally at the other.
I don't have weeds - only wild flowers.

These options are lovely, but barely less a maintenance free option than your lawn. If I was struggling to manage it I’d take the lawn up, put a good weed membrane down and then put bark on top - with a few strategic holes if I wanted to plant things that grow well under trees. You can get somebody to rake the tree debris off a couple of times a year then.

Rake the debris up once a year in late November.

Do I dare suggest that once a year you get a gardener in to pick up all the debris? This can be put in leaf compost sacks and left to form compost. The problem with growing plants underneath is that you won’t see the sycamore seedlings until they are quite big.

Love the idea of loads of bulbs and ferns, but how to cope with leaves, acorns, all the debris that these trees produce.

Agree with all the above.
Think of it as an opportunity rather than a problem. Also consider ferns, some of the Euphorbias, E. Robbiae does well in shade in my garden. Sweet Woodruff is also pretty and great for ground cover. Judiciously placed piles of logs will be a wildlife haven and create interest. Hellebores, cyclamen, snowdrops, English bluebells........

Look on the RHS site for perennial plants that grow in dry shade. I’ve had success with Lamium and Cranesbill geraniums under ( next door’s) leyllandi.

Absolutely agree with Katie59. I have deliberately done this to an area of grass, abouit 30 ft square in my garden and after over 25 years, it is full of flowers.

Plant it up with spring flowering bulb, let it grow up into a wildlife area, mow it off in late summer and again before winter. It will be lovely and scrub will not grow up if you do that.