It’s not a bad tree. It’s not dying. It’s not a nuisance. It’s not the world’s most attractive specimen, and it tends to drop lots of little branches, but that’s hardly reason to cut it down.
It does, however, make my north-facing front garden even shadier than it already is.
I’ll admit that I’m being impractical here. It’s a perfectly healthy tree that has lovely yellow leaves in the fall. But I want to grow flowers, damn it. I’m tired of trying to get hostas, ferns, and bleeding hearts to thrive here. I want Joe Pye Weed. I want Russian Sage. I want to look out my dining room window and see something. And this birch is planted smack-dab in the center of the lawn.
I’m far from being a designer. I plop things in the soil, watch them for a season (sometimes less), dig them up, replant, and repeat. I’m a plant geek. I like a plant, I buy it (or seed for it) and in it goes. Eventually, everything works out. The idea of actually planning my garden is laughable. I do admire the discipline of those of you who draw up plans, or hire landscape designers to do it for you, and then follow through on those plans. I don’t know how you do it.
The thing is, I’m also a confessed treehugger. I feel guilty for even thinking about cutting this birch down. If it were diseased, or infested with carpenter ants or something, then I wouldn’t think twice. But the damn thing is healthy. It mocks me with its flush of buds each spring. Is it wrong to hope for lightning?
Anyway, I’m throwing it out to you guys. If this were your tree, in your north-facing yard, where sun was at a premium…..would you keep it?