"Dave K." wrote:

We live in a suburb of Minneapolis, and the back 3/4 of our backyard is
heavily wooded with 100+ year-old oaks and elms, lots of smaller trees and
saplings, and lots of underbrush.

Sounds like a forest fire waiting to happen.

Although we really enjoy the nature and the privacy offered by the woods
(which is a big reason we bought the house), we wish we could make it more
usable for us to venture into and for the kids to play in. Now there is a
lot of undergrowth and small trees growing in the forest, which makes it
difficult to walk through without getting snapped in the eye by a branch.

Thin it out, prune it up. Even consider having one of the big
ones taken out to create a clearing (pretend it got struck by
lightning).

Also, because the underbrush is heavy and thick, mosquitoes are particularly
bad in this area. Not a lot of light gets through the canopy of old trees,
so we can't plant anything back there except for shade loving plants.

Take a serious look at them - perhaps having a professional
arborist in for a consult and some selective pruning would
lighten things up. A good pruner can make a tree smaller and less
dense and you can't really tell what they have done.

We like doing our own planting and landscaping, so we don't want to hire a
pro. However, we could use some ideas. How do pro landscape designers
typically handle heavily wooded areas? Do they simply create some transition
trees and shrubs (which we already have) where the lawn meets the forest,
and then leave the forest alone, figuring it can't be improved upon? Or
would a landscape designer typically recommend getting rid of all the wild
underbrush and smaller trees (i.e., those with a trunk that's less than 6
inches in diameter) to make it more accessible, and then planting
shade-loving plants, like hostas in strategic places?

Active management: clear brush and mosquito habitat, selectively
prune the trees you keep to decrease shade denseness in some
areas, remove spindly trees (weed trees) of all species. Keep a
few of the more promising trees as eventual replacements for the
big ones.

We'd hate to cut down healthy small trees, but I'm not sure there's a way
around it (most of our small trees are tall and thin and too big to
transplant).

In nature, the big trees you see got established along the
fringes of a clearing. Go ahead and clear the weed trees out.

Tsu

--
To doubt everything or to believe everything
are two equally convenient solutions; both
dispense with the necessity of reflection.
- Jules Henri Poincaré