Trees

AH I tried BBC iPlayer SORES on your recommendation but sadly although the programme (BBC4) came up (December 4th 2025) it stated “This programme is currently not available on iPlayer”. Shame, I bet it was really interesting!

I love that we have a variety of trees in our garden and lucky to back onto a common. At the end of the garden I can see all the neighbouring houses and they all have trees. It’s lovely listening to the birds as they sweep across the spaces. The magpies are irritating especially when the cats are out. Picture for reference of our fire pit last weekend.

We love trees but the silver birch in our neighbour’s garden has grown tremendously tall. It is just over 40 years old. As it was planted by the developer and we bought new. The problem is DH is allergic to the pollen and it is the drooping sort so you can imagine the amount of pollen released. Poor DH really suffers.

Large trees should not be planted in urban gardens- they don't belong in that sort of environment.

I love trees but they should be grown in protected woodland otherwise it can become very difficult to manage them.

M0nica

J52

aggie

Trees are essential, they lock in harmful stuff
If you cut it down you release harmful stuff, compounding the harm by burning the wood

I like trees, but if they fall on people they’re harmful as well!

but how often do they fall on people compared with caar accidents that hit people or people who trip over their own feet (like me)?

Well you’re quite right of course, but not much help to those who are under the tree.
We had 6 pendulous Silver Birches bordering our last garden with a listed Oak at one end and Ash at the other. All bordering a lane.
Our insurers required a two yearly inspection by a tree surgeon to cover danger from them falling on anyone or car in the lane.
They might have been the 1-10 million quoted above.

I have a large garden on a downward slope. I have an oak which is neat the neighbour's boundary. However this tall tree with its wide canopy is also at the bottom of their garden and on the northern edge of their large garden, so it will shade my garden and not theirs.

I keep hoping that people in general will learn values other than tidiness.

I can see the woods from our back garden, I love the noise of wind in the trees.
We have dwarf crab apple and cherry, neither should grow higher than 5-8 feet, but will provide cover, food and habitat for bugs and birds.

We've hundreds of large beautiful trees.

Lovely wood for fires, stacked and drying.

J52

aggie

Trees are essential, they lock in harmful stuff
If you cut it down you release harmful stuff, compounding the harm by burning the wood

I like trees, but if they fall on people they’re harmful as well!

but how often do they fall on people compared with caar accidents that hit people or people who trip over their own feet (like me)?

I love trees too.
We're in a very wooded area & although we're a commuter town, there are lots of mature trees in gardens / along roads.
We have 2 huge copperbeech on the boundary, they were probably planted in the 30's when the houses were built. They do make a mess & shade the garden but I still love them. (Not much grows beneath them but Japanese maples, peonies & spring bulbs do well).
Lots of people here pollard their garden trees, they still look lovely. & Urban trees are real mood boosters - flowering cherry & planes in W London, silver birch around new build blocks of flats.
Re-wilding round here has meant more weeding and also increase in rats. But the wildflowers & butterflies more than make up for it.

I love trees, which is just as well because my bungalow is surrounded by them. I have a massive 100 yrs+ Holm oak, it looks very impressive but drops its leaves all year, which means a lot of leaf collecting 😱, I hoover them up with my lawn mower twice a week. I had another one, but because it had ganaderma fungus we got permission from the Council's tree lady to have it cut down, despite being in a conservation area. We left a 4ft stump to put nuts and scraps on for the birds and squirrels.

I would like to put a row of laurels down the side of our fence, for protection, privacy & block noise.
I wouldn’t have them any higher than 8 feet.
I think we had a discussion on here a while back, I seem to recall one person sayings they had deep tappers (I can’t remember now). Are laurels a nuisance?
What are the best trees to grow for hedging that we don’t have to faff with too much?

J52

aggie

Trees are essential, they lock in harmful stuff
If you cut it down you release harmful stuff, compounding the harm by burning the wood

I like trees, but if they fall on people they’re harmful as well!

You have a 1- 10 million chance of being killed by a falling tree.

Judi Dench - My Passion for Trees, BBC,
an hour long programme, be amazed

I don't count Llelandii as proper trees, Ambergran!

Sometimes a tree has to be cut down - for safety reasons, for instance. We had to take one of ours down a couple of years ago because it had grown very rapidly and was interfering with the telephone lines. There are two very large conifers in a garden a few doors along from us and if they were to come down in a storm, for example, they'd totally destroy the cottage next door.

As far as I am concrened the more trees the better - better for the environment and better for me.

Obviously there are places were trees are inappropiate and dangeous, but at the moment I am tree deprived' After nearly 60 years of living in houses where I could see forest trees from my house windows, I now live in a house where not a single green shoot can be seen from the back windows and just a few churchyard yews from the front.

People like Alan Titchmarsh put a lot of time and energy into telling people to plant a tree in their garden - much of it without explaining what would happen 20 years down the line. We've seen a number of people nearby having trees taken out because they swamped the little handkerchief size gardens.

Our neighbour has a huge Leylandii next to our fence. I dread to think what would happen if it falls. It doesn't cast shade on us and we have our side cut back regularly so we at least have a nice green 'wall' whereas his side has branches about 10 feet long and his very nice, long garden is in shade a lot of the time.

aggie

Trees are essential, they lock in harmful stuff
If you cut it down you release harmful stuff, compounding the harm by burning the wood

I like trees, but if they fall on people they’re harmful as well!

Our trees dont annoy anyone, except perhaps for the sheep in the next field.

I am not convinced there is a single tree around that has stopped growing upwards!

The rate of growth seemed to be acceptable. Until about 15 years ago. Since then, there is nothing stopping them.
Any number of different sorts.

I like trees, I’m quite knowledgeable about the various specimens and there’s nothing like a walk through woods with my DGSs and Little Dog, but the massive sycamore in my neighbour’s garden?? My gardener says sycamores are just massive weeds - I’d take a chainsaw to it myself, if I could.
Yes, it was here when we moved, Spring ‘93, but that was 33 years ago and it’s still growing. Of course, because of its position, the only garden it shades is mine - luckily I’ve a big garden, so I can mov around to find the sun.

I like trees and live in an area with lots of woodland and heathland . I also live in a tree lined street which is beautiful when they’re in blossom.
I’m not a fan of leylandii , mainly because home owners don’t get them trimmed and they grow so high that it’s very expensive to get them cut back and they are a nuisance cutting out the light .
I would never buy a house with leylandii .

oops I had the hornbeam and whitebeam mixed. The one I can see is whitebeam, developers are told to put hornbeam in, they can grow to 90 feet

Very good post Rosie51 and looking at 5the plans for new builds, developers are often told to put whitebeam into the gardens as `eco` lip service. Bear in mind that these woodland trees can grow 50 feet

I can see one from my garden and it overhangs a neighbour, it is about 30 feet from my fence and will never cast shadow in my direction. The plans for my property had a hornbeam, I told the builder I would put something else in, hence the crabapple

Are you saying no tree ever stops growing?That doesnt make sense to me. Perhaps it is true, however

Trees do stop growing. Redwoods reach hundreds of feet but that is unusual. If you buy a tree from a garden centre it will tell you what the average height and spread will be. If you have inherited trees then you will need to look them up.

A lime tree will average 45m with a growth of 60cm a year. Field maples - very common - grow at the same rate but only to about 20m. You can pollard them to keep under control, we had three done this year at a total cost of £600.