Conifer trees: cut them or not?

Hi all,

I bought my home three years ago. It's an old and big house with a garden on the back and a tiled place on the front side of the house. The tiled front side is facing to the south, so the rear garden is on the north and has less sunlight as the house blocks it partly. There are two very tall conifer trees in my rear garden, close to my home, about 2 meters. They are the home of owls, so normally I would not like to consider cutting them. They give shade as well during the hot summers.

But the area around the trees, let's say in a radius of 3 meters, has a very dense root network and nothing seems to grow there. I'm planning to remove a few very old sheds to make room for a vegetable garden. The trees give shade, but they take away sunlight for my future garden. I think they also make it more difficult to grow vegetables especially closer to the trees.

So that's why I'm wondering if I should cut (remove) these trees? I would like to plant new, smaller trees in my garden again, I think in the northern border of my garden to have some shade. And a different species.

I made some pictures of the trees in my back garden. I hope you can give me some advice and my story is clear enough to understand... Should I remove these trees or should I keep them?

Bottom image: top view of my house and gardens. Shed 1,2 and 3 are to be removed and replaced by one smaller shed on the northern border side of my back garden.

Hi John, welcome to Permies!

What a dilemma.  I will go ahead and tell you what I would do, but that is only what *I* would do.  Personally I would leave the tree, keep the shade on the house and grow in containers that could roll so as to stay in sun as long as possible.  That might sound a little far fetched, But I just have a hard time cutting a tree in a yard.

But I really don’t know the full story.  I don’t suppose you could give us a generalized location could you?  I am not trying to pry, but a tree that shades a house means something much different in a Southern climate than a Northern climate.  Also, do you get a lot of storms in your area?  A tree that close could potentially be a concern for falling on the house.  These are things I just don’t know.  But strictly from the shading standpoint, I would leave the tree, but again that is my thought and by all means you use your own judgment.

Again, welcome to Permies.

Eric

Hi Eric,

thanks for your reply! I live in the northern part of The Netherlands and we sometimes have storms / strong winds here. This year we had 9-10 Bft, but this is a very rare thing to have such storms. But I live in an open landscape near sea.