"Thus it is apparent that you will choke and starve your tree for water if you plant "pretty little flowers" around its neck. " Hardly. I'd say they got that pretty much backwards. First, it is difficult to make an accurate analogy between a natural wooded habitat and a cultivated garden. Second, the reason many trees in naturally wooded settings are devoid of much undergrowth is simply due to insufficient light conditions combined with the much more aggressive and far-reaching nature of tree roots compared to that of smaller growing shrubs or herbaceous perennials. The trees hog the lion's share of available soil nutrients and moisture, effectively choking out the smaller growth, not the other way around. In a garden setting where attention can be paid to irrigation and supplementing nutrients through mulching or fertilization, that is far less likely to happen. Even then, many gardeners experience difficulty in developing plantings under the canopies of well-established trees - often much too rooty and too dry. But as to smaller plants choking out larger growing trees - no flippin way!

The reason(s) amending of soils in small areas is counterproductive do not vary with the type of soil. Sandy, silty or clay-like, it makes no difference. You do not want to install plants in pockets, strips or zones of one soil texture surrounded by soil of a different texture, as this sets them up for likely problems with how water moves into and out of the soil around their roots. In the case of plants to be left in place for many years (or indefinitely) without lifting and re-planting there is no point in incorporating organic soil texture modification materials (bark, compost, peat...) even if the bed is large enough to minimize or eliminate water movement problems for most of the plants - once the amendments decompose the effects they produce will be lost. Inorganic amendments like perlite and sand do not decompose but enormous amounts of these have to be added to change a heavy soil into a light one. And if too much is added then a droughty and infertile (leaching) situation may be produced, that may be more limiting than a heavy clay-like soil. The most straightforward approach is to choose plants adapted to the existing soil type and plant these in wide, shallow holes dug out of that, loosening it over a wide area beforehand and mulching well afterward. The most satisfactory mulch for woody plants appears to be clean wood chips. If arborist wood chips available nearby tend to have bramble stem sections or other undesirable material mixed in then play chips from a local dealer may be the best bet. Ones we obtain here as cedar play chips are very nice but have become quite pricey, as far as it goes.

Almost our entire Hosta garden of about 800 varieties are in an old CCC Red Pine Plantation. After 5 years or so we discovered that Red Pines have a very dense feeder root system too much like so many Maple trees that can choke Hostas to death. We've adopted a new planting regime, and a rescue program to keep everything going, but it's an on-going project. Oddly enough, we have a lone Jack Pine tree that does NOT have these choking near-surface dense feeder root systems, so those beds are wildly successful. Sometimes it pays to dig into the area of intended planting and look and/or feel what's in that top ten inches. . . Regards, Mark, the Hosta Hillbilly, dug a lot of choking Hostas in the past several years . . .

transplant shock .. poor media for a tree ... and over watering ... it would have been better if you had potted it up.. BEFORE it leafed out ... then the leaves wouldnt have looked like this.. since they wouldnt have been there ... it is also best to put a new transplant in full shade until the roots start working ... i would not water it again ... until your finger.. inserted 3 inches.. indicates the media is drying ... if i were to have done this.. i would have used up to half wood chips in that media you used ... trees like a sip of water.. then near total draining.. and near drying before another sip ... your muck will keep it too wet in the long run .. unless you are very keen on making sure it doesnt stay sopping wet ... the problem with that all-purpose stuff.. is that annuals and perennials... like very spongy wet media ... and i am sure that stuff is great for that ... but not for trees .. good luck ken