generally speaking.. nut trees are deep rooted ...

if you are talking about a babe ... the roots probably wont be a problem for 10 or 20.. or 30 years .... is it really going to be a problem??

anyone grow under buckeyes???

ken

i have a japanese horsechestnut (aesculus turbinata) in my garden, but cant speak for having hostas planted beneath the tree. however, its an interesting tree with large palmate leaves. it has been pretty slow growing in my garden, but has withstood the recent hot and droughty summers. the european horsechestnut doesnt do well here at all. ive tried and failed.

The tree I purchased is 6 foot tall already so will cast some shade in the surrounding hosta bed. It is a really pretty tree. I can put it in several places in my yard or in with the hostas.
I figure in 20 years it will be someone elses's problem and I will probably be dead and they will be cursing me for all of the trees they want to cut down. LOL...my revenge from the grave.

I used to have a row of pretty large common horse chestnuts (until they died of a disease that has affected most of the horse chestnuts in western Europe). They were not very old, but they grew at an incredible rate.
In the early days as a collector, I used them to get some shade for hostas in containers.
The chestnuts were extremely greedy feeders. Their roots grew into the pots and extracted every last bit of nutrients in it.
The soil in which the trees grew was basically sand, with a top layer of 30 in. black garden soil. On a regular base I added a � in. layer of compost as a mulch. Well, the trees managed to turn the whole bunch into plain sand again: almost all of the "black" was eaten out of the soil.
Maybe the japanese type is less greedy, but don't say I didn't warn you !

Rob

Rob, do you know the name of the disease killing the horsechestnuts in Europe? Is it the bleeding canker disease I have heard of?

The disease is bleeding canker. For the last 10 years huge numbers of the white horse chestnut in Europe have been affected and have died.
The stem appears to be "bleeding" (dark patches) and the bark comes loose. Infected trees dwindle and die within a couple of years.
Furthermore most trees are infected by the horse chestnut leaf miner. The miner moth lays its eggs in the leaves. The first signs are light colored to orange spots on the leaves. Later in the season the leaves shrivel, turn brown and fall of, long before autumn. My trees were infected with both diseases.