Coppice Block: Linden & Chinese Toon

I have a small space (1/4 acre property including house and everything else.) One of the things I would like to fit in somewhere is a coppice block for Linden & Chinese Toon for some perennial salad greens / vegetables.  Both these trees get big if left to their own devices, and I would like to coppice them often enough to keep them at a manageable height for harvesting (preferably without having to get ladders involved), while not killing them off. Any recommendations for spacing /  rotation timing? I've never done a coppice block before.

Linden/lime (Tilia spp.) coppice very well, either as regular coppice, at ground level, or as pollards at head height or above. There is a lot of it in the woodlands near me and it regrows from the stump when cut back, even when a huge (30m+) tree was felled.

If you want to graze animals around the trees then there is some advantage to managing as pollard rather than regular coppice stools. Linden leaves were used for centuries as animal fodder here in the UK and so, I would imagine, they are a favourite foodstuff for them to nibble. That may require you to use the odd ladder though.

As for spacing, I see healthy linden trees growing at 8-20m spacings. These are huge trees and, I would imagine, they could be squeezed to the lower end of that (or below) if they were kept pruned. In  general, a pollard will need more room than a coppice stool.

Unfortunately the only animals we are allowed (city lot) is 3 poultry. We've had ducks in the past, but they were killed by a bear a couple years ago. We will probably get ducks again at some point because they are fun and eggs are nice and they make great slug and other pest control, but I don't think 3 ducks grazing is going to be a problem. I can always temporarily block the coppice block off the spring following a coppicing until the shoots get tall enough.

Hi Kalin - great idea!
Have you checked you like the leaves? I find Tilia cordata leaves are very pleasant when young. The Toona sinensis I gather is more of an acquired taste (mins is still a bit small to harvest - it likes a warmer climate I fear. You could also consider growing white mulberry: I understand these leaves also make a good vegetable, and you get the bonus of fruit as well! I visited Martin Crawford's Forest Garden at Dartington a couple of years ago and he was pollarding several trees for leaf vegetables (My visit report)
I would suggest if you are thinking of keeping animals then pollarding makes more sense than coppicing. Pollarding is just letting the tree grow a trunk first, then cutting it back at a height a few feet above ground level.  This way the new growth is a little less accessable to browsing animals (and stray dogs...). You can make it at an easy height to reach still if you only need to proetsct from ducks - 4 to 5 ft above ground should be fine.  Limes are commonly pollarded in the UK when grown as street trees

These are probably a bit taller than you would want though.  They can also be pruned to make quite ornamental forms if that is a consideration (for example Glebe house gardens
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In each of these cases I understand the younger leaves to be the best. Depending on your climate you may be able to make more than one cut a year so keeping a supply of new leaves through most of the growing season. The spacing therefore could be pretty tight.  Lime trees can be planted as a hedge in the UK, so I guess you could pick your spacing to suit access. My suggestion would be to look at mature trees local to you and measure how long the new growth is in a year and use that as a guide.

Nancy, thank you for all the useful information.

I have tried the leaves of toona sinensis, as I had started one and subsequently killed it when life happened and it got forgotten in its pot and died before planting. I have not tried a Linden, as I actually don't know of one growing in town. We're small and isolated so it's not always easy to find things to try out /test. I have heard good things and am willing to try it - worst case I don't like it and it is eventually replaced with something else. (I am considering this with my heartnuts, which have finally started producing and... I'd just rather have hazelnuts. Less work cleaning/curing and taste better. I'm going to give them one more season before I decide for sure. Or I might do some grafting from two of the trees on to the third, and then downsize to just one... but that is totally another topic and I'm getting side tracked.)

As said above, I really can't keep animals aside from some ducks, because of city bylaws. Either way - I could pollard or coppice - is fine however as it gets at the same goal for me to have easily harvestable / manageable sized perennial veggie trees. Knowing that Linden's are planted as a hedge in the UK is very helpful to know that they can be spaced rather more tightly than growing a single specimen tree.

I have morus rubra mulberry, which I absolutely love for the berries. It was another one of my "well, if I don't like it I can always take it out" experiments because I had never had a mulberry in my life and I'm the only person I know growing one. I'll have to check if rubra also has edible leaves. I already get so much fruit off my (still quite young) tree that for a couple of months I'm harvesting approx 4L bucket of berries every few days and freezing most of it. It's more than you would ever think should be able to come from a tree it's size. I can't imagine what I would do with berries from 2 trees. I think this one once mature will already be more than we can eat!

I'm not sure about the perennial trees having long seasons for picking leaves. We have lime trees and while the sheep love browsing on the leaves, by late spring they are clearly rather tough. I suspect you would get a few weeks of fresh salad suitable leaves as the tree leafs out. Others may have more direct experience of eating older leaves, but I would expect the flavour to get less pleasant as the year goes on.

I walked past one of the recently pollarded Linden trees near me the other day. It is 7 yards from the base of an enormous poplar in one direction, and 9 yards from another Linden in the other. The tree was pollarded at the beginning of this year and, as you can see, is recovering really well.

The thing about tree greens is toughness.
My working plan is to dry and/or juice them, so they can be added to soups or drinks.
Drying is especially robust, needing less equipment than most juicing, though a steam juicer is on my wish list.

So far it seems to work on mulberry and grape leaves.

Did you know there are dwarf linden trees?
Look for "tilia cordata lico"
I really want one!