I have a young 'Trompenburg' Japanese maple planted on the edge of my pond pathway. I'm in the process of re-doing the path with flagstone and have loaded about 5" of 5/8 minus gravel in which I have yet to compact. The tree is sited back next to a couple of 4 man sized rocks which the flagstone will border so I will only have a semi-circle (minus 5" with no gravel) around the base of the tree that is in the walkway. The question I have is how far do I need to bring that out to make sure I don't mess with the roots? Am I OK just to come out to what the dripline is now? I don't have a real good pic loaded on photobucket so hopefully this one will suffice. The tree is right above the stairs up to the middle landing and the path leads from there past the pond to the side gate.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1067078}}