I actually saw that thread and meant to respond. I know you got lots of advice not to add soil for fear of smothering the roots. I live in maine and cannot dig into the soil here. I have to use a pick axe and then hit rocks, and then more rocks, and more rocks before hitting solid ledge. In order to have a garden, I had to add soil on top of the ground, even if there were trees planted there. No one ever planted a tree in my yard...they all started as acorns or seeds on the wind or whatever and their roots found a way to weave under all those rocks and over ledge.

My first garden bed was under birch trees, and I added about 8" of soil. The trees has not died in the eight years since I did that, but I guess there is still time for that??? So far, it's thriving and have increased in diameter so much. In fact none of the trees in my yard have died yet from adding soil. My FIL's garden is 20 + years old, done the same way, and he is yet to lose a tree either, so....I dunno.

Anyway, that's my experience, and he is my bed under a couple birches...everyone seems happy enough...hostas ferns, astilbe, etc

Thanks coll...good to know!

my whitespire birches.. planted 14 years ago .. have a lot of surface roots under them ... on my sand ...

but i dont have hosta planted under them ..

i referred you over here.. hoping others had specific advice..

ken

Yes I have two beds under two birches. They do fine and I didn't really do much to the soil except till it up a little. There's also a black walnut beside them on the neighbors side of the fence. I obviously like a *challenge*?
Anyway they're all doing beautifully under the birches.

This post was edited by ThistleAndMaize on Tue, Sep 2, 14 at 11:22

Hey Coll, is that Paul's glory and Deep Blue Sea under there? Also, what is the other blue/green hosta with gold/chartreuse margins on the right? I'm practicing ;)

Nope, that's Love Pat in the middle, Remember Me on the left and First Frost on the Right. Since this bed doesn't get much light, the " white" on those two stays pretty yellow all season, and the blues stay blue.

It's a beautiful bed coll!

Thanks, drc, and good luck with your new bed, should you decide to proceed. Some of us here use spin out bags to plant hostas in areas where tree roots are a problem....First Frost in this bed is planted in a bag, but everything else in there is not.

coll...that suggestion leads me to ask if this idea will work: single layer of a heavy plastic (like a Hefty garbage bag) poke holes in for drainage, put in bottom of planting hole to hold in moisture. Thought it might help keep the plants and birch from fighting over the water. I will be watering the bed all over with a sprinkler hose to ensure the birch and plants get adequate water.

But if I can't dig a large enough hole (usually dig hole 2-3 times the width of plant ) that might not give the roots the space needed to expand???

Will check out the item you suggested.

do not use plastic in your planting hole ...

do not amend your planting hole ..

bare root all hosta ... of all foo foo media and fill hole ONLY with native soil ... and the plant. of course ...

never fert only the hosta ... broadcast if you insist ...

and never water only the hosta ... broadcast ...

no matter the tree .. if you dig a hole.. and sever roots... the tree.. being the super competitor it is... and being a fully established monster.. will immediately fill the planting hole with new feeder roots ..

ANYTHING you do.. to encourage that new root growth ... will speed the trees ability to fill said hole with roots.. and eventually choke out the invader ...

i would like to know.. as to both responders above .. how long they have had their hosta under birch .. both are rather new addicts to our GW hosta world ...

i welcome you to this forum ... and one trick.. is to do one topic per post ... many peeps.. read a post once.. and never come back ... and when you switch topics some time later ... like your plastic idea ... then you limit your replies.. only to those peeps that remain ... and that is often.. very limiting ...

good luck ... i never want to discourage anyone... i want your addiction to thrive due to the vast base of knowledge we can add ...

ken

Oh sorry, I guess I wasnt clear in my first post. My hostas have been under my birches since 2006. ( except for First Frost in the spinout bag, which was put there a few years ago)

Thanks Ken!!! :) I have been reading many previous posts on the hosta forum to educate myself on planting hostas. I am going to prep the bed this fall, make my final decisions on which hostas to get and plant next spring. Since this is right by the front walk/door I am concentrating on fragrant hostas.

I had planned in my naiveté to plant lots of hostas under a Birch tree. After being educated on this forum and trying to dig under it I realized it was not such a good idea.

I have gone with mostly the ground covers you see.Ivy ferns,etc.
This is only it's 2nd year so will see how it does.
The 3 hostas I did put in as kind of an experiment and will see how they do.When I water the garden I make sure this area gets soaked really well too.

Florence Shaw was a famous hybridizer and grew all her hosta under birch. Her hosta series was named for her property which she called Birchwood.

(I don't know, as we don't birch in this part of Texas.)

bk

Found a picture taken in July. It is taken from the other side.

Newhostalady, I actually have two birches in that bed...about six feet apart or so. The smaller one just got snapped in half during a violent storm this summer so I may end up cutting it down. Yes, I would have to think that a multi trunk stand would have more roots to contend with.

I would think that if I dug my hostas up, there would be roots intermingled. Unless you plant your hostas in a field, I don't know how you could avoid tree root invasion. Pretty much my whole garden has established trees of various types mixed in. Perhaps all the hostas in my garden are doomed to fail and I am living in lala land, but so far, they all get bigger and better every year, so I'll enjoy things while they last.

Thanks everyone for your continued input!

NHL. I will look for those articles. To appease the DH, I have to keep a 4 foot section of grass next to the driveway so the snow plow has a place to push the snow from the driveway!

I had done research on this years before but at the time, with 5 kids at home, we needed lawn more than another plant bed. The kids are all gone and now I want less lawn. My DH wants a condo but that's not happening :)! So finally I am addressing this area. I do know that you can kill a tree by raising the soil level over the roots. My plan is to roundup the grass, put mulch over it, and when I plant, use the spin out bags to keep out the tree roots, voles and to isolate the dreaded HVX in case I get a plant with one. I may very well find next spring that there are way too many birch roots to contend with. I have a list of the 9 hostas I want to plant (fragrants). Perhaps I should only order a few of them to start, giving me more flexibility on placement and less stress on where to place the rest if this location is too problematic.

BKay, will look for info on Florence Shaw, thanks.

I should apologize for not sharing that 4 years ago we created a large corner bed under a 32 year old oak. We planted a Japanese Maple, hostas, hydrangeas, snakeroot, heucherellas, goats beard, columbine, thalictrum, bergenia and Japanese Forest Grass. All are thriving except for the Stoplight heucherella and the forest grass. I was warned to expect it to grow to over 3' wide, that has not happened. And when the snow gets high the rabbits trim the maple! But my experience is that birches have more surface roots than oaks. And my oak tree is growing! This summer as I stood in my customary spot eyeing the bed, the top of my head actually touched oak branches. Please don't say I should limb it up, the lower branches help to hide the townhouse complex and village bike path behind our property.

Thanks again!!

This is my birch, 40 or so year old. I tried to plant about 3 to 6 feet away from the base of the tree on the other side of the tree in the photo. I could only dig about a foot down, and this was the case for a good 8 to 10 feet along the bed. I would have had to cut a lot of big roots to plant there and then deal with the root competition, as well the tree takes up all water so this area is always dryer then the rest of the bed even though it is the shadiest part. The plants that are closest are ones that seeded themselves, a plantaginea, one of the toughest hostas in my garden. So for me at least for me planting close to the tree doesn't work.

see why i got you out of the tree forum.. and led you here ...

oak is one of the highly favored trees.. just about all nut trees . are deep rooted ...

all you can do.. under your birch is try ... and now you have a flavor of the odds of success ...

good luck

ken

ps: and dont planting any of the foo foo hosta .... like great expectations ... you will have enough issues with the tree ... there was once a post called something like .. THE WORKHORSE HOSTA... or some such... you would have the easiest time with those... which will just about grow on the driveway.. with no soil ... hubby is brilliant for leaving somewhere to push the snow.. you cant believe how many times i have to remind newbs about that

link

Here is a link that might be useful: driveway workhorse hostas

link

Here is a link that might be useful: seven workhorse hosta

DGregory - I have bookmarked both your links, thanks!

Ken, very happy I posted this here at your recommendation and hubby will be happy to hear someone thinks he is brilliant, haha!!

Here is my list, are they all foo foo? Should I scrap it and start over? Want the bed to be a success and not have to pull out and replant.
Diana Remembered
Fragrant Blue
Fragrant Blue Ribbons
Fragrant Bouquet
Invincible
Old Faithful
Royal Wedding

Thanks all!!

yes.. dump diana remembered ...

ken

Well, I have a river birch. A betula negra, aka black birch. The bark peels like the white or paper birch, but it is all tan looking. It is a fast growing tree, and I planted it long enough ago (we moved here in 2006 after Katrina) that it is now shading my sunporch from the afternoon sun in the summer.

I'm not planting hosta anywhere near the front of the house due to western sun being the only light the plants there get. I have a foundation planting of dwarf nandina and giant liriope, and an old old Pink Perfection camellia which was here when we arrived, and looks like it is dying.

Roots from the birch are humped up above the grass, and I figure in a short while they'll be hitting the lawn mower blade. Therefore I want some low black ophiopigon (monkey grass) to cover the small area (between the house and the driveway where the tree is, simply a crescent shaped strip of grass there). It would create a shadowy shade look, and do very well with the tree roots. The only other resource to try would be the dry shade loving ferns, avoiding the area near the edge of the tree dripline which would be too sunny for them.

In the area beneath the birch, the ground seems to keep going down, I think the tree eats the soil, so I keep adding bags of compost to avoid standing water when it rains heavy here....we are inclined to have torrential downpours. And being near the driveway, I don't want to step out of the car into a shoe-covering puddle! My only other solution to the wet shoe problem (water standing due to the clay in the subsoil) would be to create a brick strip edging the cement drive wide enough for walking beside the car.

Here is a view of the birch trunks from inside the sun porch. Our "windows" are Lexan.

Fragrant Blue is a stunning colour, but out of all my plants it is the most favoured by slugs so I don't recommend it for your front yard. Instead, you may want to consider a blue hosta that looks good into the fall: Halcyon. It is tried and true, and for me is one of the last to look ratty. In place of Fragrant Blue Ribbons (which is a sport of FB so will likely also be a slug magnet) you might instead choose First Frost or Autumn Frost, which again will look great for a long season.

NHL, your recap of planting under trees is most helpful, and I added it to my Clippings file.

ConnieMay, I don't have a problem with Fragrant Blue nor FBRibbons being slug magnets. Of course, in early spring I spread some slug pellets into the tall liriope surrounding the area of blue hosta. Still, there were slugs beneath pots sitting on the bricked portion of the courtyard.

Here is what my two FB & FBR look in 2013 spring...FBR lost its white margin but got it back in 2014, thank heaven.

However, I agree that Autumn Frost would be a delightful hosta to grow in the front given proper lighting conditions.
I got mine in 2012 from Hallsons and popped it in a tub with 3 others from that order. This spring for the first time, AF absolutely bowled me over with its beautiful look. So three years in to growing it, I'm in love with that strong grower. It is dealing with our climate beautifully, and will be repotted to stand alone after it goes dormant. Read that to mean "after the weather cools off".

The betula negra or black birch or river birch grows here very well, especially along banks of streams, and it grows quickly. It is rather hard on lawns because roots come up out of the ground, similar to magnolia grandiflora, and only things like ground covers could look good beneath them. I planted mine probably too close to the house, about 7 years ago, and it is shading the sunporch from the western sun quite beautifully. As old as I am, I anticipate no foundation issues during my lifetime, and after that I am out of here!