Hello Erin,

I am in NW Indiana.

I also have a raised bed garden around a large Norway Maple. We put it in 5 years ago. The garden extended out 15 feet around the tree. The Maple has killed about everything in it.

The Maple's sends up surface roots into the raised bed and chokes out the plants, plus they suck any moisture out of the soil so bulbs, tubers, etc. end up dying out within a
year or two.

And farther out from the tree, the roots are at the surface and have killed most of the grass.

It is practically a wasteland under it now...I now use the raised bed garden to deposit my lawn clippings.

Wildcat

If you limb up your maple and will provide WELL ABOVE average watering, you could grow pretty much everything under the maple.
If not, fuggetabout. Only pachysandra and lily of the valley will survive there.

Wow, that's not very promising. EGO, what's "limb up" mean? I'm new to this.

I put the hostas in last fall & they've done very well so far wihtout much watering from me--do you think they'll get choaked out by the maple? I was thinking about putting some sort of plastic liner at the bottom of the bed (which is only maybe 1 ft out from the tree & 5" deep--would that help prevent the maple roots from strangling whatever I plant in there? Thanks for the advice.

'Limb/limbs up' means to remove all branches/limbs of the tree to the certain height to let sun in under the crown.
It could be 5,10 or 20' up depending on your light situation.
There are two main problem to grow anything under the maples: absense of light and thick mat of the surface roots sucking all available water.

By limbing up you are solving (partially) first problem.
To solve the second problem you have to go a long way. Maple's feeder roots extending further than tree's crown and no matter how much soil you'll put on top of them they'll will find their way up to the surface, unless you you decide to raise the soil level by 2-3 feet which would kill the tree. Fortunately, maple's roots will not strangle other plants, they'll just deprive them from water. Therefore, if you raise your soil level by 10-12", plant something relatively shallow-rooted and water, water, water you'll give a new plant chance to establish its own root system BEFORE maple's roots will get to the surface. Still, you constantly have to do a lot of supplementary watering even when your plants become established.
By adding 10-12" of soil you are risking to smother the trank of the tree, so if your bed is circular, I'd rather start it 1-2' away from the trank and not go any farther than the edge of the crown.
Tip: don't try to dig/remove or in any other way disturb established maple's roots, you'll only promote their agressive regrowth. Just pile fresh soil on top of the surface and plant your plants in that 'clean' soil.
This border was built in 2003 not around one maple, but four of them and I grow there a lot of shade and moisture loving plants: ferns, hostas, astilbes, hydrangeas, rhododendrons. Even climbing hydrangea managed to establish themself and climb that dreaded maple!
So far, so good. Everything happily coexist, but I have to water it twice a week no matter what and every other day if no rain.

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2005
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I gow lots of stuff under the canopy of big old maples.....they do fine....but I water....
However the big old maples are so lovely.....and shade loving plants planted beneath are so cool and serene looking....
It's well worth the extra water....
Linda C

It might be too hard over your winter to do this but I have seen the area under maples planted with autumn Cyclamen and the combination of the pink among the bright yellow leaves was arresting.