Menu Home Clipart Gallery Gardening Resources Gardening Books Trees & Shrubs Anti-Desiccants Arbor Day Azaleas Bagworms Bark Birch Trees Birch - Borers Christmas Trees Conifers Crown Gall Dogwood--Planting Dormant Oil English Ivy Euonymus Scale Evergreens--Recommended Fall Colors Fall Webworms Flickers Flowering Shrubs--Preservation Forsythia--Blooms Frost Protection Galls Gardenia Ginkgo Trees Gypsy Moths Hairy Vetch Heartwood Hollow Trees Hydrangeas Ice & Salt Iron Chlorosis Leptospermum Lignum_Vitae Maple Seeds Mistletoe Mice Control Nursery Potting Mixture Oaks--Fertilizing Pepperberry Plants For Birds Pollarding Pruning Paint Salt Injury Salt Injury--Tolerant Plants Sapsuckers--Yellow Bellied Sawdust Shade Plants Shade Plants--Trees Sweating Plants Sweet Gum Balls Tree Injection Tree Placement Tips Tree--Stump Removal Trees, Desirable Evergreens--Over 50' Trees, Desirable--25' - 50' Trees, Desirable--Over 50' Trees, Desirable--Under 25 Feet Trees--Determining Sex Walnut Toxicity Wood Chips Woodpeckers--Downy Related Books on Trees Sections Garden Notes Garden Design Annuals and Perennials Flowers Fruits Houseplants Glossary of Terms Lawns and Groundcovers Pests Soils and Fertilizers Trees and Shrubs Vegetables

Tree Roots

Trees suffer damage or are killed when grading is done around their trunks or their roots. In one class  of cases it is due to cutting the main roots, as when  pavements are laid. When the roots are in direct  line of the pavement damage can seldom be avoided,  but wherever possible all roots should be left intact. 

In another class are the trees that have earth filled in deeply over their roots and the bases of their trunks.  Misinformed people argue that because roots grow,  often deeply, in the ground the trees will not suffer  by an increased depth of earth to a foot or even a yard.  But countless sickly, dying and dead trees prove this to be incorrect. 

The fact is that roots and tree trunks need air as well as moisture in the soil. This may be assured by  building wells around the tree trunks. The wall of  the well need not go any deeper than the original soil  surface, but it should be wide enough to allow the  trunk ample room in which to expand as it grows.  Such wells, when built of large stones, laid without  mortar or cement are better than solid walls because  they allow a much larger and freer passage of air  into the soil. 

Adapted from: Gardening Short Cuts