Keep the tree, while you have children young enough to climb on it and swing on it.

As Erma Bombeck said, one day you will be able to grow grass.

If it's healthy, and it's an oak, it's likely already braved several hurricanes, so little worry there. They lost some oaks on the coast from Katrina, but it was much more common for the houses around the big trees to be blown to bits. The trees stand in most places. Grow gardens in the back yard. Lots of people would pay small fortunes to have a tree like that moved into their yards, if it were even possible. Can you move your driveway so that it curves around and shows off both your cute house and your lovely tree to arriving guests?

The hurricane thing isn't really a concern. The biggest annoyance is the grass and landscaping situation and of course the fact that the tree sits directly front and center of my house and only 5 or 6 feet away from my front porch. Which is wonderful for birdwatching but little else. My children are getting older and rarely if ever climb the tree or use the swing, heck they really only used it when we first moved in and very quickly got over it. The tree isn't going anywhere, I could never cut it but OH how I dream of it.... I have no idea what type of tree it is, I know i've never seen or noticed another one like it.

I have dreams of a pretty manicured lawn with flowerbeds and small ornamental trees, a possible low white picket fence around the front to keep the dogs in with a white arbor covered in vines at the walkway. none of which is possible with this tree here...

Ah well

I don't understand why you can't still do the fence and arbor and rather than struggling with grass why not plant mondo grass, pachysandra or some other evergreen groundcover? You could also do container gardening for color.

wow - really hard decision. When I lived in Delaware I had a similar situation only it was the backyard. 60/80ft oak tree right off the back deck - I just couldn't have it cut down since it had been planted the year my son was born - 20/30 years later it dominated the postage stamp backyard.
The kids were long gone but I loved sitting under it and watching the birds. It was a virtual bird motel with all the different levels of activity. My gardens had to adjust over the years to an all shade one and I learned to do alot of container gardening. One thing you might consider is the way it also probably cuts down on the AC bill in the summer. Check out the shade gardening forum - you may get some answers there as to how to garden under it. I do agree with you tho love/hate relationship - your dreams sound so pretty also....

Lynne

Mostly Emurr its the size of my yard that prevents me from doing what i'd like. See it wouldn't be so bad if I had a good sized front yard but I don't its a tiny front yard and it has this huge tree in it that takes up the whole thing. While I could technically do the fence and vine thing, I think the yard would look crowded and theres a chance that the low hanging branches would even be touching the arbor thing. It would just be too much. See I could envision my postage stamp sized yard with the little white picket fence but with the tree there it just dominates the yard. Anyways thanks for the suggestions on evergreen groundcovers, I will look into it because I hate not being able to keep the grass green. That tree seeems to suck up everything and leaves a brownish 6 foot diameter around it with the grass getting greener as it goes away from it. At first we thought it was the shade but we made a point to buy grass for shady areas last year to no avail so we are eager to look into other options.

Lynne, so nice to hear of someone who can relate!

I have a teeny tiny front yard also and have a very big cherry tree in one of the front corners. I used a short picket fence and I think it looks fine. Small yards seem to call out for a pretty fence or at least I think so!

Does your tree drop leaves in the winter? Could it be a live oak?

If you live in town where vinca would not escape into everything I could envision planting some vinca as a ground cover and possibly sinking containers into the ground to plant various shade perennials and annuals. You could let the vinca grow up and around the containers so that they are not visible. How about a small water feature surrounded by shade plants.

I too have a terrible time cutting down a tree. I have an old twisted, broken pecan in my front yard. Moss and ferns literally drip from it, woodpeckers all over it and my husband really wants to see it come down. I love the old tree and it does provide a nice shady area in the summer. It has nothing to fall on out there so I am going to let the 'old man' as I call him, stay until he falls over.

I have two very nice pecans in the back yard though that ARE coming down. I hate to do it but in a storm they could fall directly on my house and I can't chance that.

We had a large oak in our front yard that scared the daylights out of me every time we had a storm. During Hurricane Fran, it was swirling around like an umbrella. We had two other large trees hit our house during Fran, causing about $5,000 in damage. Another tree blew down later in a thunderstorm, causing another $5,000 in damage. When the crew came by to take that tree off our house, I had them cut down the large oak as well. I hated to do it, but I've slept a lot better ever since. Plus, my grass grows now that used to die every summer. I planted a sugar maple where the oak used to be, and it's tripled in size. No regrets. I am a tree lover, but sometimes they just aren't in the right place.

Difficult decision, no doubt. May I suggest vinca minor as ground cover, has lots of little blue flowers and spreads. Looks really pretty. I have loads of it under the HUGE, OLD oak trees on my property and it does very well in the shade.
Sadly, at least two of the big oaks must go, as they are too close to the house and crowded. Branches come down in the winter ice storms or heavy wind. :(

Gurly - even better then dropping leaves, it drops pollen balls all over my front porch every winter but other then that it keeps most of its pine like needles. Meaning the tree is never bare. Oh I have one of those twisted ugly pecans in the back as well but its far enough away from the house not to do any damage if it should fall so we leave him there.

Emurr- I agree small yards do seem to just call out for those pretty fences...

Dawgie- we are surrounded by trees as well and during the last hurricane we nervously sat around waiting for one of them to topple over on our house but we have been lucky in that instance, we did lose a garage but that was because the wind blew it over. The pices in the back are the ones that concern us most the tree in the front looks unmovable and stood stoically during the storm and just lost a few branches.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions on groudcovers i'm writing them down and looking them up because truth be told I think the pros outweigh the cons or at least my guilt just won't allow me to consider chopping the treedown for too long. We had a tree trimmer come over a while ago to trim the front tree and when he got here he was so sad at the prospect of cutting down this tree because he said that as a boy (now in his 60's)he used to climb this tree when his friend lived here. We reasssured him that all we wanted to do was trim it and he was so relieved. I think my neighborhood might all string us up and shoot us if we dared cut it down anyway. We live in an area where everyone is older and has lived here all their lives. Our neighbor directly behind us was born in this house and the lady down the street lived in the slave house in our back yard and worked for the lady that lived here. Lots of history in this house and in this neighborhood and that tree has seen it all.

Cindy, turfgrass is the BANE of modern civilization!

It's the most environmentally unfriendly thing a person can do with land, plant-wise... It's an unnatural way for the grasses to grow, requires continual fertilizing (with excess fertilizer running off into storm drains and causing problems downstream), and even worse results from the continual needs for herbicides and pesticides...

On top of that, the gasoline engines in lawnmowers are 6-10 times more polluting per gallon of gas used than automobile engines, and to keep that lawn looking good, we have to take valuable "spare hours" out of every week or two and go out there in the hot sun to cut it (and if it WEREN'T cut, and were instead allowed to grow to its natural height, like in a meadow, it would automatically suppress weeds by shading them out -- of course it ALSO wouldn't look like a "lawn" and your neighbors certainly wouldn't be happy about it).

You're MUCH better off -- especially if you already DON'T have good conditions for growing grass -- doing as others suggested above and planting shade-loving ground covers, such as pachysandra, vinca, ajuga (there's a low-growing "chocolate chip" variety that's lovely), liriope and others... Along with establishing raised beds between the patches of groundcovers and filling them with perennials that like the amount of light they get in those areas.

Bear in mind, also, that you CAN put in some full-sun plants, so long as they're EARLY-SEASON full-sun plants, such as daffodils. I have a row of daffodils all along the front of my house, in their fourth year now and looking better than ever. They get WAY TOO MUCH SHADE in the spring and summer to do well, IF they were active that time of year, BUT daffodils have bloomed and pretty much wilted, foilage and all, by about the first of May, and it's about that time before all of my deciduous trees in the front yard really start to fill out, so they DO get "full sun" WHEN they need it.

Think creatively like that and you may find your options virtually unlimited... Just please do the planet a favor and stay away from turfgrass!

Happy Grasshating! :)
Jeff

I feel your pain. I recently moved into the "old homeplace" and there is a huge black walnut in my front yard that always used to scare my grandmother to death during high winds. I remember that we were never allowed to sleep in the front bedroom if the wind was blowing in case the tree fell. Even though I can only grow a limited variety of things around it (due to juglone) and it drops those walnuts every where, I simply cannot cut down such a wonderful old tree. The was I look at it, the tree was here at least a hundred years before I was, so it has seniority. Just learn to adapt...There are so many things you can do with shade loving plants.