posted 13 years ago
I am in MN so emerald ash borer is a concern. I want to keep the enormous ash tree on the boulevard in front of our city house as healthy as possible so it can resist pest damage. Once the pests are found, there is nothing to do for the tree except deadly chemical treatments that I would not want near the edibles in my front yard.
In some ways would prefer a different tree there (as this one has terrible structure and long old branches that impose awkwardly over our roof), but we would never live to see a replacement reach this height and majesty so I kind of want to nurture it as the overstory in our front yard forest garden. It is so big that it is buckling up the sidewalk in front of the house too. Its home is a very narrow boulevard strip of weedy turf grass with a heavy-traffic main artery street on its north side and our front sidwalk on its south side. The strip of unpaved earth is only about 3' deep.
Due to the long narrow shape of our yard (short edge in front), this tree really dominates the front view of the house and any landscaping there will really impact our "curb appeal" and make the difference between neighbors seeing our, crazy, er, ambitious garden as "pretty" or something to report to the city. So I am hoping to gussy the hellstrip up with some nice bloomers that also offer us something useful. The ash tree is on the eastern front side of the boulevard, and we are putting in a low hedge of russian almond on the western front side.
Any ideas for good looking guild mates for the ash tree? City code requires things to be both less than 3' tall (we are going to push the envelope on that a bit) and somewhat disposable (as in, the city and utility folks or anyone walking by can pretty much do what they like to the plants here). Most of the day is dappled/shade while the ash is in leaf.
I find it hard to imagine anything planted under this size of tree could "compete" with the tree in a damaging way but I also can't think of much that will be a positive input for the tree and still look nice on the curb (definitely not a good spot for something weedy looking like comfrey or nettle). Ideas?