how many acres do you have...

pic???

ken

We have three acres, although most of these trees have been planted in the front. We want to preserve views of the timber behind us so I don't think we will be planting any trees behind the house. The bur oak has its "own" location east of the house which should allow it to reach its full potential, given a century or so!

In the attached picture you can see the locust, spruce, and river birch along the right side of the drive. Behind the birch a ways is the bur oak.

Along the left of the drive is a red maple, then the large tree is the sugar maple we had planted. Off the southwest corner of the house is the linden. To its west is the red oak. To its north (directly west of the house) is the red sunset maple. We are thinking of maybe a fat Albert blue spruce along the left of the drive up by the road. I wouldn't Monday finding room for another confer or two also.

Happy to take more pictures if it will help.

Thanks.

Oops. Here's the picture I hope.

To hopefully give a bit more perspective, here is another shot from roughly the location or the sugar maple. To can see the linden off the corner of the house, the red oak to its left, and the sunset maple to furthest to the north.

It's hard to see the small trees in the first picture. The spacing looks great in the last pic. I tried to keep at least that much between my oaks, well, most of them. I know yours aren't both oaks, most of my trees are. It is tempting to keep planting, especially when there so many nice trees out there.

I think you have chosen some fine trees.

One tree that would meet the color and conifer requirements would be 'Ogon' dawn redwood. I am not totally sure it is a zone 5 tree, though. It should be since the species is.

Also, check out toronado's recent topic on his top 10 trees for fall color. Some good discussion there.

John

Here is a link that might be useful: Toro

How about the 'wildfire' cultivar (for red new growth in spring) of Blackgum Tree? It'd be something a bit different from the oak and maples, with glossy green leaves and striking Fall red color.

I'm a fan of (male to avoid stinking fruit) Ginkgo trees, though somewhat slow growing (at least slow to start) - perhaps an Autumn Gold Ginkgo?

Would a Golden Hinoki False Cypress Tree interest you? To put some yellow-blazed evergreen into the landscape.

Perhaps some other types of oaks? Does wildlife food production factor into your preferences?

Richard.

How about a 'Princess Diana' apple serviceberry? (Amelanchier x grandiflora 'princess diana') This is a smaller flowering tree that gets delicious blueberry-like fruit - Excellent if you like birds! It also has a stunning fall color.

I also really like Carolina silverbell - A medium sized tree, it can get to be the size of a European linden in not too many years. Actually looks best if backed by evergreens.

For conifers, you could try Canaan fir (Abies balsamea var. phanerolepis) - This is one of the healthiest firs I have grown.

A few ideas! What "look" are you going for on your property? Formal or informal? Neat and tidy, or more mix-and-match?

thx for the pix ..

well thank God you actually have space.. for what you already planted.. i was half expecting you to say you had a 100 foot lot by 50 deep.. lol ..

my best advice.. PLANT NO MORE ... this fall ...

let these leaf out next spring ... sit on the porch, perhaps with adult beverages .. extrapolate what you have.. to full size.. find new spots ... dream a little dream.. etc ...

and then be ready for next fall ..

too many new gardeners.. think they can plan out instant gratification .. and want it all done by next season ... gardening is about the future.. about 'collecting' .. and about not ever really being done ...

you have some very problematic trees as far as gardening under ... their surface roots make it near impossible in the decades to follow..

should you think you will ever want to shade garden.. like hosta e.g. ... you should ID a specific long term spot.. and INSURE you plant trees which will cooperate with such ... and that will not be birch, locust, nor maple ...

since you have the space.. you might want to consider flowering shrubs.. planted 10 to 15 feet from the road and the driveway ...

great property.. congrats.. ken

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Ken, thanks for the nice compliment and you're right it does seem to be a good idea to wait to plant more. I do think that is what we are going to do. I'm hoping to maybe get a couple of b&b confers next fall and plant a few more deciduous trees. Then it'll be saving for a zero turn mower to mow around all the new trees!

Answers to a few questions are:

we definately want a more informal look. Right now we feel like we have created an "extension" of the timbered draw out and around the house.

We would like to draw in more birds and squirrels, but don't need to draw in wildlife that will graze on the veggie garden too!

We don't plan on doing any gardening under these trees. We have a small cutting garden and a large veggie garden and thats more than enough to keep us busy! Hopefully we can limb all these trees up enough to allow growing grass/weed lawn though.

I'll take a look at all those suggested trees. I had already given thought to the wildfire blackgum and a serviceberry. A ginko may be nice too, my wife and my college had a number of large, female, ginkos on campus and planting a ginko would be a nice reminder of college.

I don't know if it will help much, but I've attached a very rough schematic what's where. Long term I'm thinking we want to keep the center of the yard with no trees. This, I see possible planting location as just left of the drive up by the road and along the left property line.

Hi Md, nice to see somebody else from central Iowa. Let me tell you something you probably already know but that might be lost in the above comments. You can plant trees at pretty much any spacing you want. From 12 to 120 feet is all ok. What you have so far would be, environmentally speaking, be called a savannah. It is a common choice in north American gardens and is probably the most formal look. It is also extraordinarily harsh on trees. The statement that trees need space to survive is largely bollocks. The oldest trees are almost always in dense stands. So, in summary, do not feel limited by anything we say here. Most of what you will hear are opinions. Then, of course, there are things that will be near impossible, like growing a zone 10 plant here in IA, or grow a hickory under a beech tree canopy. But, as long as you stay within common sense, you should be just fine.
Congrats on your garden and house!

How about some oak hybrids. Those are pretty unique as they are very uncommon in nature. Oikos tree crops has a very good selection. Also be sure to check out the American Chestnut hybrids on their site as well.

Agree with Ken - Instant gratification never helps. Years slip by much quicker than you might think (or plan), and suddenly, those puny saplings you planted are 20 feet tall and growing 3 feet a year. I've found that if you have just moved into a house, observe the landscape for a while before you go planting tons of trees any old place.

In a woodland savanna, shrubs and wildflowers flourish - More open-canopy forests often have a richer understory. I would wait a few years before planting smaller trees like silverbell, dogwood, and serviceberry (unless you're using them as specimen plants or focal points), to give the "canopy" trees a chance to root in and take off.

Don't really see how spacing trees farther apart is detrimental - Virgin forest usually has trees spaced fairly far apart. It's second-growth that usually has trees packed in tightly.

Spacing trees further apart increases exposure to wind, reduces the amount of moisture in the air (woods are moist due to plant respiration) and decrease the connectivity of the mychorrhizal network. Increasing amounts of research suggests that forests are, in all effects, chemical and biological networks. Spacing changes everything.

I agree that pioneer plants form sparse forest. That is because they tend to grow quickly and have reduced tolerance to shade. As the forest progresses, it gets denser, typically, unless you have fires and oaks and hickories can take over by sprouting and forming canopy ahead of all others... This, at least, is my understanding.

But I might be biased. I find nothing particularly beautiful in the urban savannah cookie cutter landscape design that everybody seems to be so fond of. It is ordered and crisp and neat, but is, IMHO, lifeless.

Cheers

Well, a fully mature tree can have an immense canopy spread. 8 feet is forestry standard for most trees, I like 9-15 feet, especially where I'm going to plant understory trees and shrubs. I do prefer closed-canopy forest, but the amount of plants you can grow beneath them is limited. From what I've seen, trees spaced 25 feet apart or closer tend to develop a closed canopy, and still leave room for an understory. Around here, most forests are thick, beech-maple-elm forests. There's a little bit of oak and hickory on poorer sites. The "savanna" landscape is really not bad, if you fill under it with smaller understory trees (dogwood, redbud, hornbeam, serviceberry, silverbell, magnolia, etc), shrubs, and wildflowers. Actually very full of life! I don't really like trees that are spaced 50 feet apart with lawn under them.

jimbo, we think alike on spacing. I don't think forest density is quite necessarily the best for gardens but I don't see ANY reason why I should give 50 feet of empty lawn around a bur oak seedling, just because, in 150 years, it might be able to span all of it. That is, IMHO, the surest way to make sure you have a terrible looking garden for several decades.
I am designing a garden plan and the trees will be, on average, about 15 feet apart, with some specimen trees here and there with more space and exposure.

Beech-maple-elm forests? man, you are lucky!!!! I am trying to recreate a beech forest here in the middle of iowa. Wish me luck. If it doesn't work, i'll "settle" for oaks. :-)

P.S. by "lifeless" I really meant "cold and unnatural", or somewhat artificial.

Interesting discussion here regarding tree spacing and savannah "yardscapes". In our situation, we are more interested in that savannah type of planting I guess (hadn't that that would be considered frmal, but I suppose that makes perfect sense!) We're lucky in that we can have both. I'd guess that of our 3 acres about .75 of an acre is an oak, walnut, and hickory timber draw.

Boy you are starting with a blank slate. You have the opportunity to design an entire landscape. My 1.25 acre yard had the opposite problem when I moved in - too many trees and hardly any place to garden! But since then many trees have been removed (the preponderance being the invasive Norway maples).

Now my yard is an upland savannah. I've planted lots of native understory shrubs and trees. I also have large gardens using many native perennials and grasses and lots of annuals for the pollinators. In the way back it's semi-wild and there are thickets of small trees like crabapples and choke cherries.

This type of savannah landscape with a diversity of vegetation (particular natives, it attracts insects) is very attractive to birds - I've got tons of them and they are constantly flitting amongst trees and shrubs while foraging for food and other resources. Also lots of insects and other critters. Just like Jimbob said, very full of life.

The main drawback with the savannah landscape is that there is lots of partial sun, but not so much full sun. In my yard the mature trees are ironically spaced out just so that there is hardly any full sun anywhere in the yard and I have a terrible case of sun envy.

There is a beautiful cucumber mangnolia tree growing in Shelby, IA. It is supposedly the only one in Iowa. If I had that much land I would plant two of these. I took some cuttings this summer but I can't tell if they made it. I'm pretty sure they didn't but they did seem to put out some roots before the drought caught up with me.

The tree is planted on the North side of a large house and is sheltered by those South winds.

Here is a link that might be useful: Magnolia, Cucumbertree Magnolia acuminata

Are you not at all interested in fruit? That's what I personally would plant first.

Here is a link that might be useful: Iowa orchard

milehighgirl, there are several cucumber magnolias at the Reiman Gardens in Ames IA. One of which is quite large, probably about 25 feet tall. The tree definitely grows in central IA. Two of them, as I remember appeared to be quite exposed.

terrene, I think your sun envy has more to do with the fact you live in MA, than with your garden (I lived in Boston). Here in IA, I believe partial sun is still often too much in summer, at least for most humans.

Milehighgirl, thanks for the links. I should have said, but ee planted a small orchard thi spring. We did so will all of our trees purchased from stark bros. nursery. We planted:

Apples: stark golden delicious, stark grand gala, red Fuji, goldfish, enterprise, empire, and candycrisp.

Cherries: northstar and stark surecrop

Peach: intrepid and reliance

Plum: bubblegum and starking delicious plum

Pear: orient, moonglow, and starking delicious pear

I hope we chose ok! Were certainly novices and my father in law has had good luck with his trees purchased from Stark. I'll be asking for pruning help this spring for sure!

Milehighgirl, thanks for the links. I should have said, but ee planted a small orchard thi spring. We did so will all of our trees purchased from stark bros. nursery. We planted:

Apples: stark golden delicious, stark grand gala, red Fuji, goldfish, enterprise, empire, and candycrisp.

Cherries: northstar and stark surecrop

Peach: intrepid and reliance

Plum: bubblegum and starking delicious plum

Pear: orient, moonglow, and starking delicious pear

I hope we chose ok! Were certainly novices and my father in law has had good luck with his trees purchased from Stark. I'll be asking for pruning help this spring for sure!

Nuts. You want animals plant nuts. Chestnut, walnut, hickory, butternut, etc. You might check site requirements (chestnut requires acid soil, for example), but it sounds like you are near Des Moines and would be easy enough to grow most nut trees. I personally have bought stuff from www.badgersett.com which is fairly close to you. Someone else mentioned Oikes - they are pretty good for small starter trees.
Just plant away from the house or you will have a mess!

Wow, would I love to put a meadow right up front by the road. While you're waiting for that nice selection of trees to take hold, a meadow could be planted in spring and be full-blown by mid-summer. That, and I would definitely explore naitve shrubs and understory trees. Such an opportunity to attract wildlife, I think I would go broke in 5 years trying to fill out that space. You'll get some good advice on here. Hope you keep checking in with updates on your progress.

C2g

Love the suggestion of a meadow. I don't know how it a meadow differs from a prairie? We had been thinking of doing a prairie in the front of the house. What type or plants would you consider to be part of a meadow?

Thanks!

You'll get some great advice on tree selection here but be sure to get some advice on placement on the design forum.

I like the advice to take your time and live in the house a bit to help the design settle in.

I started out w/a relatively blank-slate lot of similar area.

Now there's almost 30 species & a total of ~70 trees....

That might eventually be alittle more than a savannah. Still, I used to live here in VA;

Beng, that is beautiful. That said, my wife definately is looking for more of a traditional "lawn" although well have to see how our thoughts progress as we are in the home longer.

As I keep looking, I've identified more trees that I'm interested in. They include:

Ginko
Serviceberry
More oaks (black, red, white, maybe post)
American smoketree
Shagbark maple

Beng, that is beautiful. That said, my wife definately is looking for more of a traditional "lawn" although well have to see how our thoughts progress as we are in the home longer.

As I keep looking, I've identified more trees that I'm interested in. They include:

Ginko
Serviceberry
More oaks (black, red, white, maybe post)
American smoketree
Shagbark maple

you might be able to get away with a southern magnolia in a more sheltered spot. Plus you could try a hardy palm like Rhapidophyllum hystrix (needle palm) they are hardy to -20 degrees F. Also sequoiadendron giganteum 'hazel smith' would make for an interesting specimen.