Mulch and water your plants, but I would be worried about the shade factor.

Well what if the plants like shade? Canadian hemlocks love shade

Little grows beneath them in my area. Especially younger ones. Probably you will have to move your plants out away from it.

Hemlocks love moderate conditions, but living under a Norway Maple ain't moderate. It's a dark hole.

One solitary maple isn't too bad, light can come in from the sides.

Maples are very difficult to get anything to grow under them, and Norway maples are probably the worst. If there's nothing--no weeds, no grass--growing under them now, it's unlikely anything you plant will grow underneath.

Like huggorm says, depends on how much light gets thru the sides. Pagoda dogwood and irises grow well in my sugar maple's root-zone (irises right up to the trunk). So shade-tolerant understory trees/shrubs/shade flowers are worth a try.

I have lots of undergrowth around my Norway maples. Woodland herbs, raspberry, laburnum, acer pseudosieboldianum and so on. My parents was growing strawberrys right below the canopy of the largest Norway maple I ever saw. If nothing can grow below a Norway maple some other conditions have to be present as well, just a tree isn't enough.

how big is the maple ...

and as noted.. is there grass under it ... if grass wont grow there ... nothing will ...

how about a quick pic

ken

There are not much grass growing in the woods, but lots of herbs and shrubs...

No grass now. But I think there was long time ago I can't quite remember cuz I was little. Right now it's like a woodland full of leaves on the ground and it's been like that for a long time. HOWEVER, we do have running bamboo in a heavily raised bed like not even 10 feet away from the trunk of the maple and it has been doing fine for more than a decade. So what if I make a raised bed? Would that help the situation out with the plants? I also trimmed a lot the Norway maple branches overhanging on my property so it's not like there's no light.

No grass now. But I think there was long time ago

==>>> this is how i think aobut it ..

grass is one of the most invasive weeds in the world.. it will grow anywhere.. in parking lots.. sidewalk crack.. gutters.. etc ..

if it wont grow under a water sucking Norway ... then just about nothing else will .. and if you sever a bunch of roots.. to plant a plant.. and fluff up the soil in the process .... and then water the new plant.. where do you think the maple will grow new feeder roots ...

when you dug the holes for the new plants.. didnt you notice the heavy roots??? .. if so.. that should have told you about all you need to know ...

i made a 18 inch deep bed around a silver maple.. within 3 years.. the maple had COMPLETELY filled the new luscious soil with so many roots.. i could not dig in it ... only a few plants that liked it real dry made it .. like sedum .. and oriental poppy .... the hosta i wanted to grow there.. did not ...

perhaps bamboo is aggressive enough to prosper.. maybe its not.. all you are left with.. is experimenting.. and finding out what might work in the long run ... and that is the key here ... tree time.. not just a season or 3 ...

ken

Such a bummer... looks like I will have to give away the hemlocks. There were so many roots when I dug the hole I could hardly dig. It took me 2 hours to plant 2 small dwarf hemlocks. But I thought that's the case with all big trees? Like I see plants under oaks and stuff so I thought maple would be fine too. So are you all saying I should give up on gardening my backyard where the maple is?

Right now I have Several newly planted plants under the canopy of this maple. There are 3 forsythias(they still get a lot of sun believe it or not) 1 Japanese plum yew, the 2 dwarf hemlocks I was talking about, and a fireglow Japanese maple.

So let me ask this, which is worse for the plants: the maple giving too much deep shade? Or the shallow roots sucking up all the water?

Also ken when you said you made an 18 inch bed, did you do it with topsoil?

You will have to spray the hemlocks for woolly adelgid anyway. That is much more likely to kill them than the maple.

The other plants may or may not work. It depends on the exact conditions. Grass grows poorly if at all in too much shade, so the fact that grass does poorly there doesn't really say much besides that it is shady. Also the east coast usually gets a lot more rain than the midwest. Twice as much is fairly typical. So plants that struggle from drought under certain conditions in the midwest may be perfectly fine under those same conditions in the east.

My response is in your other thread at

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/4265492/what-are-some-ways-to-deal-with-the-invasive-norway-maple-roots?n=1

Well theres some good news. I just asked my neighbor if I can have the tree cut down by an arborist if I pay for everything and he says he's not opposed to it :)

Ok, so I just replied to your other thread but for future reference: use a mattock. They are very useful tools for removing roots and digging in rocky soil.

Following this thread with interest. I have a large Norway maple in my backyard and I was hoping to plant a cherry tree just outside of its shade canopy, but I fear that the root system might be a problem.

Do not plant a cherry tree unless you plan on implementing a spraying program. Please start a new thread instead of hijacking this one.

I am in the same boat as Heruga. I am in zone 5b (Canajoharie) and just spent a few thousand bucks on plants, some of which will go under an entire row of Norway maples that make the soil so dry (even after a rain). I am thinking of digging a 2-3 foot deep trench and lining it with a DeepRoot Tree Root Barrier, which would serve as a barrier between the maple and my new plantings.