hey sue... they are conifers... lots of great posts and peeps over there ... they are not shrubs... and the difference will become more apparent.. should you ever have to prune them ... in my z5 adrian MI .. all planting is done in oct.... giving them about 6 to 8 weeks to get set before ground freeze ... your odds will be reduced the further you go into nov .... or for the month after ground thaw ... in early april ... i dont know about the roses ... i used to get them mail ordered in may .... never thought about fall for those... might want to check the rose forum good luck ken

Dan, if he's more than 20 feet from the trunks of either do you think it would be ok? My personal guess is there might be some shock but they'll pull through. junebug, if you go under that root, how far away will the pipe be? My concern is if the root is touching or nearly touching the pipe and the root gets a few inches rounder then one or the other is going to have problems.

Weinar, there's no way to not destroy a large percentage of the roots from your description of this project. If the digging parameters can't be adjusted, you will simply have to proceed and that damage will have to happen. One thing that can help is to saw any roots encountered rather than letting the high hoe just rip and tear them out. They will still be lost but the resultant wounds will be of a type that the trees can deal with a bit better. The gravel backfill will not be a problem in and of itself. Following this project, you can help in the trees' recovery by making sure they don't suffer from dryness if the weather becomes droughty. Beyond that, it's all snake oil. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the to-me snake oily product "Superthrive". I still can't quite believe it but I have heard a number of testimonials by people whose intellect I otherwise respect, claiming that this material did indeed help with situations not unlike yours. But man, what a whacky deal that is. Good luck.....+oM

It would be nice if you could expand in some other direction, as you can't count on cuts and fills not damaging trees subjected to them. All true trees (as opposed to palms and bananas etc.) have extensive, mostly superficial root systems that often extend well beyond the branch spread - only in deserts do normal tree (as opposed to tap and anchorage) roots "go deep" with any regularity. The main problem with building over tree roots is cutting them off from the full amount of moisture coming out of the atmosphere; of course if you actually physically cut them off entirely with a blade - or kill them with soil compaction then the rest of the tree will not be getting any water from them then either.