A picture is worth a thousand words, Ken.

Curious thing...In my front yard I have a Norway Maple that has just the kind of root masses you always describe along with some huge ones on the surface.

In my back yard, you've often seen the picture of the rotted out Maple (another Norway according to my arborist) with the hosta planted in it? That one presented NO problems when planting my hosta below it. No root masses, no huge roots on the surface, only a few (3-4) roots about 3" in diameter about a foot deep. Tilling the ground for the new bed just 4 feet away from the trunk presented no problems at all. Ten feet away I ran into a couple of roots the thickness of a pencil but that was it! Do you think this is because that tree is dying OR is that tree dying because the root system is insufficient?

When it does die, I'd like to replace it with that Tri-color Beech tree you're always talking about if it will grow in my 5A zone.

Char

I think the reason why ken has such problems with tree roots is because of the soil where he lives. As he has said many times....pure beach sand, the roots need to stay near the surface to slurp all the moisture as soon as it falls.
As I was running errands today I took notice of hosta growing under a maple around here....lots and lots of them. In many places here our good rich top soil is 6 feet thick, in some places you can dig the basement of a house and never hit clay or sand. In other places it's thinner. When I moved in here the clay like potter's clay was a bare 4 inches beneath the surface at the top pf the hill....but at the bottom? I have never struck clay...but of course I have never dug deeper than a small tree would need to plant.
This is the hole dug to plant a new tree this spring....no clay...but I did run into an old water line! LOL!

Linda C

i HAD maples and willow at the old house.. great sandy loam .. just about the best stuff in the world ... hosta suffered ....

to get rid of the maples... I MOVED ... and made sure there were no maples on the new property ...

now i have oaks and wild cherries... little problems with either ...

linda... is that your beer can.. or the hired helps ... lol

finally .. it all depends what hosta are growing under the trees ... the hosta that will grow on the driveway.. wont care about a stinkin maple ... the undulata clan comes to mind ...

your foo foo cultivars ... like GE .. that almost die on the way home form the nursery .. will get choked out and die .. as might minis .. and smaller varieties...

your old standards.. and vigorous greens.. probably wont care ...

ken

Bud light....what else!

I have to weigh in and agree with Ken. Back before I knew better I planted a large bed in the shade on the north side of my house with a very large maple tree about 10 - 15 feet from both the front and back corners. I had a lot of difficulty growing hostas and everything else towards the back of the garden. There was no "year 3 leaping" going on out there! In fact, the soil was full of maple roots even on the surface. The front end of the garden did not have that problem. The hostas there are huge monsters. Come to find out, the front tree although huge was dying so there were very few roots to interfere with my hostas. I had it felled this spring because it sustained so much damage in the Buffalo surpise snow storm it had become a danger. Now I have to deal with too much sun. My soil is very rich and heavy clay not a grain of sand to be found. I find it very difficult to disagree that maples are a detriment.

A few years after we moved to the lake, we lost a huge maple in our front yard. We'd had an exceptionally wet spring, and an early summer windstorm just knocked it over. Like you, Ken, I was astonished at the roots -- all on the surface of the ground! And I live on a lake . . . basically at lake level. The water table is just a very few feet underground . . . yet the maple roots preferred to stay on the surface.

I tried for years to garden under a silver maple in the back yard. Several things flourished there: poison ivy and thistle come to mind. Not much else. I now have landscape cloth and mulch there. If I weren't moving, I might try Bishops weed . . . but nothing else.

I like looking at maples,in other people's yards. A little story about the garden club I belong to. For years there was a silver maple in a bed that we maintained at the county fairgrounds. There was an Alma Potsch (sp) aster planted beyond the drip line of the maple which I had considered yanking several times when I was weeding there. When we asked permission to limb up the tree a couple of winters ago we were told we could take it down if we liked. We didn't wait for them to change their minds. We got a couple of our hubbies with chain saws and got someone with a stump chipper and away we went. That aster which had always looked awful (it wasn't shaded) became a traffic stopper plant by that fall. We had people calling members to ask what that gorgeous pink plant was. So just imagine hosta or other shade lovers planted UNDER one of those nutrient & water robbing thugs.

So we all grump about maples... who here has a better idea for a tree that suits hosta gardens?

Some pendulous evergreen or flowering cherry?

No? Then what?

I've heard Ken gripe about Japanese maples, so, if not them, what? Contorted willow? Isn't willow a water hog?

So, am I to understand then that I should not have hostas near my Japanese maple?? I have Blue Betty Lou planted in front of one, but close enough that the weeping branches of the maple are starting to touch the hosta...Blue Betty is doing fine with about 4 eyes, however, seems to be out growing the space design wise...so next spring should I move Blue Betty totally away from the space or just move her over about 8" to allow both to grow in harmony (???). This Japanese maple is in its space about 8 years and is only about 2.5' x 2.5', probably because it does not get alot of sun. Any advice is very helpful.
Vicki

Location, location, location!

I have 5 Japanese maples located in different areas of my garden. All are of a more common variety bought at the same time.(on sale at K-Mart) I have two in my south hosta bed near oaks and a long needled pine, two in the water course hosta area are under a silver maple and the last in the front oriental garden.

The two in the south hosta bed were eaten off by rabbits twice before I wised up and protected them but they are finally growing, 4+ feet tall, and aren't interfering with the hosta. The two in the water course hosta area are stunted and have hardly grown in the 6 years I have had them,2+ feet tall. The one in the oriental garden is a beauty and over 6 feet tall.

Actually I kind of like the stunted look of the ones under the silver maple but just hope it doesn't finally kill them off like it did some of my hosta before I wised up and potted up the more important ones.

Connie

Connie, I needed that reminder. I have two giant silver maples and one slightly smaller something-else-maple (I don't know what cultivar; it's green, turns yellow in fall, that's all).

The giant silver out back is underplanted with about 300 grape hyacinth bulbs. They seem happy there, but periodically, I get an urge to put some hosta in. And that's when I need a reminder like yours: don't bother! Argh.