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Remove a Yoshino Cherry?

15 years ago

We have what I am 95% certain is a Yoshino cherry, planted by the previous owner of our house approx 8 years ago. The tree is in a spot between the driveway and the fence that is 32 INCHES wide. It's also within 4 feet or so of our garage. The trunk is planted directly between the cable/phone and power supply drop for both ourselves and our neighbours that runs to our houses.

Currently, it's about 15ft high and is now almost touching both our power supply lines - it's long past touching the cable/phone lines. I think the PO tried to "control" the growth because the tree was butchered (headed back) at least three times on some branches. Not to mention the fact that it's got three leaders.

For the two years we've lived here, it's had pretty flowers in the spring and provided some much needed shade, but each year by August there have been almost no leaves and what leaves it did have looked just like they had cherry leaf spot.

This year, the leaves are looking bad already and some of the smaller branches already have no leaves. The leaves on the rest are drooping (not from lack of water this year) and there is now a root girdling issue that made its way to the surface. It's already re-infested despite my attempts last year at controlling black cherry aphid. And the constant stream of ants that love that.

The soil in that spot is very dense and compacted, even if you don't account for the driveway and garage issue and we have a fairly high water table.

After not wanting to get rid of the tree (I'm the type that saved a large box elder at our last house) I've decided we should take it down this year since a natural death is coming pretty soon at any rate - and I'd like to do it now, before it grows any larger so that we'd have to hire someone to come take it down.

Now the "better half" is saying he doesn't want it down and that I'm being "paranoid" about it dying. I totally will not like the lack of shade, but have been researching more space appropriate tiny trees for that area (so far I've got possibles for a smoketree, Hungarian lilac, or Beautybush - I'm open to suggestions but NO Japanese maples) that we can plant soon.

Should I put more effort into saving this tree or should I push for it to come down?

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Comments (2)

ultraviolet
Original Author
15 years ago
I just took these to show the type of space it's in - it looks far better than it did this weekend when I pruned out a couple of the branches full of dead leaves. It also looks far worse droop wise for a couple of days after it rains.

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FWIW, until this weekend I was against it coming down simply because it IS pretty for a week in the spring (and unlike some places, I rarely see any flowering cherries). And the huge shade issue. However, because of the previous mangling pruning, I was just overwhelmed by how to even start correctly pruning it away from the power lines. Not to mention the stress of the pruning to an already stressed tree.
Dibbit
15 years ago
I would take it down. I very much doubt you can grind out the stump, what with utility lines so close to the roots. My advice to your DH is that it WILL need to come down sometime - the girdling roots, not to mention the too-close proximity to the power lines - so it may as well come down on your terms, where you can limit the amount of damage. If, or rather when, it comes down on its own, it may take down the power lines with it, if not falling on a car and/or blocking your garage access. When you do take it down, I strongly suggest that you paint the edges of the stump with Round-Up, or, better, Brush-B-Gon or a similar woody-plant herbicide, to limit the amount of sprouts coming up from the roots.

Both the Smoke tree and the Beautybush tend to be as wide or wider than tall. There doesn't look to be a lot of space between the driveway and the fence - I can understand why the previous owners planted the cherry where they did, but it's certainly the wrong tree for the space - so I would go for the lilac, of your choices. If you could find a single-trunked Smoketree, or limb up a shrubby one, it might do as well or better. How about a single-trunked serviceberry?

You might be best with a largish shrub, which you can limb up into a small tree, since you need something that stays short as well as narrow.

It's a hard call for what to suggest, due to the parameters given. There really isn't a lot of room there, is there?
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