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Name that tree
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David J Bockman wrote: I seem to be coming late to this discussion Bill, but if I read it... [snip] You can also think about evergreens or conifers, which would produce quite a different effect. Dave Thanks for the advice. Yes, I am looking for something to line a driveway, but am also looking for creative ways of making relatively high sight borders to separate small areas of the yard. Basically, this place I recently bought is on a knob on the side of a hill and has about 5 acres of land. There is about 2 acres of *relatively* flat land, with the land behind the house angling slightly up, and the land in the front falling off into a small ravine that separates my land from the next door neighbor. A good part of the front is cleared, with a poorly-kept lawn. The rest is in brush and forest, with the brush so thick it is impossible to walk through. The interesting thing I have seen so far with the property is that there are lots of little microenvironments that are very different because of light, drainage, slope, etc.: The area behind the house has a lot of large old oaks, poplar, dogwood, and some other trees I haven't identified (I'm fairly new at this--my background is in microbiology and medicine, not botany). It is very shaded, relatively cool and moist, and has abundant natural ferns and delicate natural plants with fairly subtle flowers that I also haven't identified. It's biggest problem is that it is getting overgrown with english ivy and has a *lot* of poison ivy -- which is not a big problem for me, but my wife reacts to it. The area in front of the house is cleared except for a couple of large old trees that are not oaks, but I'm not sure what they are, yet. They are around 60 ft tall and very gnarled. The trunks are about 6 ft in diameter. It is the dome of this little knob, and is thus very well drained and tends to be hot and dry compared with the rest of the yard. Part is in the drainage field of the septic tank, which provides slightly different growth. As one goes more towards the ravine, and gets into the brush, there's a lot of shade growth, but it is clearly a lot drier than the area behind the house. Lots of morning glories, wild strawberry, wild blackberry and such except where overtaken by dense woody brush. Lots of redbud, dogwood, magnolia, oak, pine, and things I don't know. The trees are awfully crowded, and many are clearly not healthy. Lots of dead wood; the previous owner must have dumped the logs from clearing the open area in the brush around the house. The brush is a significant habitat -- with wild turkey, numerous birds, deer, raccoon, etc. Continuing on down the ravine (which is *fairly* gentle), it starts to get darker and moister again. Finally, there was apparently a house built here in the mid 1800s that was bulldozed and replaced by the original owner of the current house. Scattered throughout the yard are the remnants of the original hardscape -- parts of old fieldstone/flagstone retaining walls and raised beds, ruined ornaments (I cut my way down the ravine one day and ran across a stone sculpted birdbath covered with poision ivy), a partially ruined hand-dug well with brick wall, etc. Some need to be removed, and I am getting the well cleaned out and reinforced, but some are attractive as ruins. So, I plan to separate the yard and deal with each of the microenvironments individually. I plan to put a shade/fern garden in the back, break up the front lawn with different ground covers, do a little terracing, etc. and connect the areas with footpaths. I would like to have significant semi-formal sight borders between the areas. I also want to maintain enough brush (preferably controlled, such as in these larger borders) to provide habitat and cover for the critters that are there now. I figure that having multiple small protected areas as mini-gardens would be more conducive to critters than a large open area. I have read, for instance, that it is better to build borders by weaving limbs back into the border rather than pruning them in order to create areas that birds like to nest in... The other reason I plan to do it this way is that this is all fairly new to me (my last yard was 0.25 acres), and concentrating on small areas is more manageable and provides better learning that trying to deal with everything all at once. Finding trees to line the driveway isn't the big problem. The problem I am concentrating on is figuring out the right kind of thing to build the borders with, the right trees and hardscape to use as accents in and along the borders, and how to plan the small areas and paths to provide good visual effect. I plan to be working incrementally on this for some years, and will obviously be re-doing a lot of things as I learn, but some of this early planning, particularly with the positioning of the paths and the planting of the borders and trees, are things I will want to stick with for some time. I want to plan it well. billo |
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