!Even though I'm new, I have some big issues I need to talk over about concerning my garden and what to do.
Last year I bought my own place with my fiancé, over the last 8 or so months we have had it we have been concentrating on getting the house sorted (as it needed a lot of re-decorating and things), but now the weather has warmed up we would like to make a proper start on the garden, which up until now has just had the odd flower bed tidied up and nothing more.
I have big plans for the garden, it's going to go through a lot of change this year. Currently it is just your sort of bog standard 50’s to 60’s ex-council house style garden- set at the back of the house, it just has some wooden fences and a load of hedges and not really much else to it apart from a load of strawberry plants growing at the end of the patio, an unusual Australian tree at the side, and a big birch tree at the bottom of the garden by a small summer house/garden shed type building.
Its quite a small garden to work with, but I'm hoping to transform it- I'm taking out the old conifer tree hedges amongst other large hedge-like plants in the garden and adding 2 large ponds joined to each other, and generally re-styling the garden to give it a more Japanese feel to it.
The problem starts with the ponds and the birch tree though. For the last 5months I have been doing research into the ponds and pond design, and have decided on having a pond liner pond at ground level instead of one of those pre-made plastic tub ones or above ground brick ones etc…
The garden is not very large though at all, and I'm having concerns over the beautiful birch tree at the bottom of the garden, which is already around 30ft tall.
I've read that birch tree roots can easily exceed 16ft across long, and that they require well drained but well watered soils- problems with this is;
a. The soil has a thick clay layer about 1-2ft down, and is definitely not well drained. The tree seems to be doing well/ok though so far…
b. I'm very concerned about the tree roots and building the pond.
Considering the height of the tree, I'm assuming its already got quite a mature root system, and that if I dig any ponds anywhere in the garden I'm going to encounter the roots while digging (I'm aiming to have the ponds 3-4 feet deep, because I want to have fish in it), and that I have heard tree roots can puncture pond liner.
Problems with this is that pond liner is really the only practical base for the pond due to its design, and I'm sure even if I laid brick or concrete on the bottom the tree’s roots would find some way around it
.I'm also concerned about the tree’s welfare in this as well- I'm concerned if I take up a third of the garden with pond, there won't be sufficient water for the tree’s roots and they’ll die off. I considered chopping any tree roots I encountered off too so I can build the pond without any root worries, but I figured that’ll probably kill the tree too.
So what do I do…?
I love the tree, but I have been wanting to have my own pond for so long now…I also have 2 goldfish in a 30gallon fish tank that I adopted some time ago, that I would eventually like to move into a pond of my own before the end of this year.
So is my only choice to cut the tree down? I do not want to risk killing it off slowly, and then waking up the next day its toppled into a neighbours garden, or on my house
.Any help/info is much appreiciated
!
. But I feel better now after some from a different opinion