What a great plan! I can't quite figure out the scale of your plan, but just in case, I wanted to tell you that honey locusts are famous for having shallow roots--if your sunburst is close at all to the future patio, it will be quite happy to break up your patio, or at least move pieces around. Even growing grass under a honey locust eventually becomes a problem since it is so shallow rooted. My mother has a beautiful 30 year old one that she had to enclose in perennial beds since no grass will grow under it.

Other than that, I love honey locusts. They produce such a beautiful, filtered shade and are such quick but strong growers. I am thinking of planting one myself soon.

Good luck and enjoy your planting. :)

Thanks! :)

The dimension from the wall of the back of my house to the other side where comcast box is, is 78 ft. Then from side to side, it's 79', almost square.

What about my other trees, what do you think about it? If I remember correctly, the distance of the River Birch from corner at 45degrees is somewhere between 12 to 15 ft.

Then distances of Royalty Lilacs are at 5ft to each other. Distance of Royalty Lilacs on my side is 5 to 7 feet, variable since design is like zigzag.

The distance between each of Blackhaw Virbinum is 7'. Distance from west edge of this tree is 8'.

Can you please take a pic of your mother's honey locust if it's ok? The once I've seen on google are still young. I'm so excited. :)

Thanks for the warning! I really appreciate it.

Ron

Going back to Sunburst, if we really would like to put it near the patio, what is the minimum distance in feet it should be? How far does the root grow?

Ron, my parents are out of town for two weeks, but I am going to forward a link to this discussion to my mom, and hopefully she'll be able to take a picture for you when she's back. And I bet she can help with the placement, too.

I wish I knew about the other trees. I know that river birches want lots of space... but as for how much... well, I have no idea!

I'll repost when I hear from my mom, and in the meantime, good luck!

Ron:
I like your plan, however, the crabapple will probably drop its apples on your patio. The ones we used to have would drop fruit which would rot and attract wasps. No matter how often we picked them up, we would miss some and then have small seedlings come up. Just a thought.

Thanks xantippe, I really appreciate it!

There will be changes to my plan this week. Sunburst should not be placed there according to the guys at our Trees forum. Sunburst would ruin the patio since it has shallow roots.

The crabapple also grows wide which would affect the trellis. I should move it too.

I'll make some modification to the drawings soon.

Thanks folks!

Don't forget to take pictures of your hard work! We want to see the results. :)

...and don't forget to get the utility locations flagged before you dig all of those planting holes! A manhole and comcast box in the backyard will have pipes and cables leading somewhere you don't want to hit by accident.

Yes, they were already mark by JULIE. However, can you please tell me how close I should get to those cables and pipes? Is 4 ft away from the pipes and cables good enough for our future Crimson Norway or Northern Red Oak Maple tree? Or should I at least have a minimum 10 ft away from those? These will really grow big according to the folks at Trees forum.

I will take pictures too!

Thanks!

I dunno much first hand about honeylocust but I was at a garden party thrown by one of my work colleagues once, and they had locust in the middle of a flagstone patio area, it was wonderful. The plus side of those trees is they don't create a lot of leaf litter. I see them planted in islands in parking lots all the time, and as street trees in urban areas. I wonder why they don't cause a problem there? Maybe it depends on the patio composition? Also, the house where I attended the patio I think had vinca or something like that growing under the trees, not grass.

Sargent crab is a beautiful tree IMHO. I'd be willing to cope with some wasps to enjoy the beauty of the tree most of the rest of the year. But I'm a nature girl, lol!

Here's a change of topic: how did you get Google Maps to do such a large, in focus photo? The closer I got, the more distorted/blurred.
Thanks!

idabean, what Google Maps? I don't have any links to google maps on this thread. If you were referring to my other thread, I just zoomed to the max. It was still blurry but decipherable. If that's what you were referring to, just zoom out, press ALT+PRINTSCREEN on your keyboard, then paste it to Photoshop or any photo editor(not mspaint).

Rather than the placement of trees, I would question the placement of the trellis - it sits there leading nowhere, just like Chapter 1 of an unfinished story. What's in Chapter 2, 3 and 4?

Oh. I'm not going to push thru with the idea I drew above. Right now, I don't have any. I want to concentrate on the bed and plants.

Actually, when I wrote trellis before, I really meant Pergola. I saw a picture of a pergola at the middle of the backyard at bhg magazine. There is another one I saw about a month ago but it's on the side of the backyard, right on the bed. I will post a picture later which I took using my cellphone.

Oops, I meant, I don't want to push thru with the patio and trellis above. The trees/shrubs were planted last year. You can see the pics from my other thread.