Coming from someone who has a postage stamp lot and 35+ trees, I don't think there is any limit.
You can plant as many trees as you want provided they are a safe distance from structures. One problem I have run into is in one part of the yard while the trees are dormant, it looks like a row of tree trunks. I had to break it up with some large growing shrubs and evergreen shrubs.

hey

get rid of the one that is a problem ... NOW!!!!

or it will just become a bigger problem .... [BTW.. popple????]

as to the rest .... its all about your goals.. your aims.. and where you are going with it all ...

over time... plans change.. plants live... some too well.. lol .. and some die..

a garden is an evolution .... and sooner or later.. you will learn your mistakes ....

the key in my yard is to remove trees.. the season before i can NO LONGER do it myself for free .... and it is stressful to make that decision ... but removal opens so many options.. that it doesnt take long to forget about the old.. and start thinking about the new ....

when space come to a premium .. the first thing to go.. is usually duplicates .... and by that time.. usually.. some level of the collecting bug has hit ....

ROS... privet.. have purposes in life .... but one has invasive seedling potential .. and the other is just a pain to keep pruned/sheared 2 or 3 times per year ... so decisions are made ... and choices decided ...

as to making your soil sterile.. forget about that .... what you are doing is fine.. and given any sense of a decent soil.. you probably dont even need that ... and keep in mind... IF a tree/shrub/conifer is allegedly twice as big below ground as above.. most likely they are searching the neighbors yards for nutrients also ...

most of these things can do just fine without any extra food from you .. and ergo .. whatever you add to the lawn ... and soil[compost] ... is usually just a small bonus ....

your micro climate.. will be whatever it evolves into ... i dont know what else you want us to say in that regard .... whatever impacts sun and wind.. and any other weather variable ... will make changes in your yard.. compared to others in your 'hood ....

good luck

ken

Ken, I chuckle as I read your post.

"What was I thinking?" is my thought about the popple. Actually, back when we purchased our home (first time home buyer), we had NO idea what we were doing. So of course, we meander over to our local nursery, look at trees with absolutely NO agenda as far as what we're looking for...or why for that matter...and low and behold we come home with a popple. The darn tree sends runners all over my yard....wherever I dig, I'm sure to run into them. It provides nice privacy, two neighbors have commented on our intention to remove it, so I suspect they value the privacy as well, and neither of them have any trees on their own lots.

We've been lopping the top off each year during dormancy to keep it to a managable height, to avoid the expense of professional removal later on.

The only surrounding neighbor who does have trees planted...of all things...COTTONWOOD....an entire row of them, planted 6 inches apart from eachother....my understanding is these trees get 80 feet in height...in a few years they will look hideous, not to mention the potential problems they will cause to sewer pipes, our fence, etc.

Yeah, I know Privets have a bad reputation....but I think they are a terrific hedge, but I made a point to stay away from the invasive variety.

Thanks for the feedback.

Who knows? I easily have the most trees on my little lot in my neighborhood. Only 1/4th of an acre and I have 12 trees. 9 shantung maples which is very hardy and won't fall apart like silver maples around here. Others are Montezuma cypress which is evergreen/semi-evergreen sister of bald cypress. Will eventually turn into monsters and give me much needed shade from Texas hot summer sun...

I'm done with trees as I've run out of space so I'm focusing on osmanthus fragans shrubs to plant underneath trees. The fragrance from blooms on them are so strong, I had to have some but I'm putting in extra effort to get unique cultivars instead of buying regular ones from big box stores which are all the same. I want red, yellow, white and orange flowers. I want one that blooms 300 days out of the year. I want one with 1 inch flowers. Have to put in a lot of efforts to find them though.

I do use organic fertilizer few times a year to improve the soil. MUCH cheaper than using compost. I buy cheap generic animal feed from feed stores. A lot cheaper... My personal favorite is fish hydrolized fertilizer mixed with seaweed liquid and humic that I pour directly into rootball of young trees to get it off to a good start as far as soil building is concerned.. Very helpful for recently built houses on small lots where the soil is greatly ruined and compacted. Over time as trees get bigger and bigger, you get more leaves that you mulch mow on the lawn recyling nutrients back to the soil but it is a slow process to improve soil. Just don't do anything that would ruin the soil like powerful pesticide (Sevin) or synthetic fungicide that can ruin beneficial fungi that trees depend on for nutrients. There are organic fungicide that works like corn meal, Actinovate and tricodermia fungi products (grow wild when given corn meal if they exist in the soil) without ruining soil biology. I recently planted a tree in my backyard and I had a lot of earthworms. I also planted a tree in next door neighbor's backyard and it was hell. The soil was so compacted, it took forever to loosen up soil. I never found a single earthworm so I am convinced organic program works. We only live 20 feet apart...

I have a funny story...when we purchased our home and started landscaping, and not knowing a thing about what we were doing, I asked my husband if there was anything we could get to help rid of the earth worms. Duh. LOL. I'm happy to say I've come a long way since then...

I agree about chemicals on the lawn and going organic...our property was atrocious when we purchased it, severely neglected by previous owners. Not having the patience to wait for the effect of weed killers, I spent weekends just pulling weeds and filling paper grocery bags with them. After that, we started using chemical weed control, and that summer we had a number of dead birds on our property and a dead rat...from the lawn chemicals? I don't know, but since then, we switched to organic Cockadoodle Doo lawn fertilizer and weed control. No more dead animals, and our lawn is much healthier (the first year we could pull grass out by hand without much effort, in the latter years we had to rent a tiller to expand our plantng beds, it was too difficult to pull by hand).

Lou, you have a whopping 12 trees on 1/4 and you're clocking out?
You haven't begun to even scratch the surface yet. :-)

I'm serious.

It depends on how wide those trees get. 12 trees on a 1/4 acre could potentially be too many.

I would be so happy if my neighbors or the 50 houses in my suddivision would have 5 trees each. They all average 1/3 to 1/2 acre. Many of them have 3 trees...including both my neighbors.

Since being in my house 3 years, I got one neighbor to put in 2 more trees...it just infuriates me that they can only put 5 trees in after living their 15 years on almost 1/2 acre. No wonder our lawns look like hell...there is no shade! It makes me even more angry when I see these house with NO trees on the south and west sides of their houses.

The knob across the street always says "what are you doing now, your making me look bad". I just think, put some in yourself you lazy....

I have the same frustrations although I find it hard to blame someone for not doing any gardening or landscaping when there are no nurseries left and so many people are jobless or are uncertain about their job. People are underwater in their mortgages or their homes are worth much less. Landscaping is the last thing on the mind of the average person in this country.

Very very true...I personally know a guy who owns a nursery and he as been struggling the last couple years.

Hopefully with the first time buyer credit they'll use it towards landscaping! lol!

Actually, I may be able to squeeze in dwarf trees. :) Maybe a few more upright small trees for the 6ft wide hell strip but I haven't found what I'm looking for.

I have neighbors with no trees esp in the west direction as my house faces west. I wish my neighbor across the street from my house would put in more effort but it's clear that he's not into that stuff. To make things worse, he's going through a divorce and now trying to sell the house. Hopefully, the new homeowners will put in more effort into landscaping. it's a sore sight to look at from the window as I'm typing right now... I should have offered easy to grow trees that I grew from seeds. Oh well.

There's a house in another neighborhood and it has a bunch of bradford pears in the hell strip (corner lot) and you could see that UPS truck or others running through the branches.

Hi.

I live in a new development. The only trees are along the old fence rows that once stood between cotton fields. Our lot was a bare 1 acre.

I planted saplings/whips to save money and enjoy the growth.

Here's what I have, and I'm pretty much at the limit. I have a septic system and had to leave that spot bare.

Red Maple 4
Dawn Redwood 4
Bald Cypress 2
Weeping Willow 1
Sourwood 1
Crabapple 2
Washington Hawthorne 2
Giant Sequoia 1 (just an experiment, lol)
Loblolly Pine 2
Smoketree 1
American Hazelnut 5
Cherry (3 varities, dwarf) 3
Apple (2 varieties, dwarf) 5
Pussy Willow 3
Mock Orange 3
Wiegelia 3
Azela 6
Norway Spruce 3
American Arborvite (as screens) 9

I don't expect the Spruce to make it and may pull them. We're in a rural area with no sidewalks, and shallow drainage ditches (hence the willow and cypress near spots often too wet).

It looks a little odd now, since they are all rather small.
Only the Norway Spruce are in danger of crowding, so I'll probably remove all but one watch how it does with the heat for the next few years.

I hope I inspire others to plant the development.

I will remain responsible with limbs, tree health, leaves, etc. That's the key when having a suburban forest, at least in my opinon.

I, too, have about a 1/8 acre lot, but it was treeless when I bought the house thanks to Dutch Elm Disease. So, in the long term (25-30 years) when the shade trees start to dominate the yard, I probably do have too many trees, but will enjoy them while until then.

1 Crabapple
2 Apricots
1 Hawthorn
1 Acer griseum
2 Acer tegmentosum
4 Magnolias
1 Amelanchier
1 Ginkgo
1 Larix
1 Northern Pin Oak
1 Prunus 'Princess Kay'
1 Heptacodium

Please for the love of God, don't grow privet. It's invasive, and once the birds start eating and dispersing the berries, it will take over any wild land. In addition, it spreads through suckers and grows 2-3 feet per year, much faster than anything native. It continues to grow well after everything else goes dormant, giving it even more advantage. When I go hiking in my area, all I see is privet and bush honeysuckle--another "evil" plant. There's no realistic way to stop it. Please, please, please kill it.

HU-776123437, you have strong feelings about privet and honeysuckle, and I’m sure you can make a strong case for not growing them, but why not make that case with a new post? Dredging up a twelve year-old thread is more irritation than helpful.

Because that was the first post that popped up with my search--"how many trees"? I didn't look at the date. Hope you can get past it.

Depends - there are so many great small trees - often with fruit or nuts, several seasons of interest - sorbus, malus, prunus, amelanchiers, hazels, aronia, hawthorns, hollies, lilacs, cydonia...I grow over a dozen on my small allotment, along with 50 or so rambling roses and flowering shrubs. My teeny 40m2 home garden has space for a ceonothus, a lilac, a coral bark acer, an aloysia and an indigofera...and a third of that space is greenhouse. There are so many gorgeous gardenworthy trees - I tend to grow smaller rowans such as hupehensis or cashmeriensis - keeping the native beech, ash, oaks for my 6 acres of woodland.