i am not impressed with any damage to trees by late august ... they are going to fall off in 8 weeks or so anyway ... if you were in MI i would tell you 8 to `12 weeks of severe drought ... is why ALL trees and shrubs in the area.. are stressed.. and showing early leaf change to some extent ... also .. trees have been at it billions of years.. they rarely need anything from us.. once the are fully established ... so dont ever try to love them to death .... finally.. plagues of bugs are cyclical over the decades .. and rarely.. short of denuding a tree.. of any real consequence ... double finally .. lawn sprinklers are not really set up to deal with trees .. but anything they add.. sure wont hurt ... trees prefer a DEEP drink.. and then near drying ... not the short surface watering .. but i would even bother with the deep one ... as far as the tree is concerned.. but if it makes you happy ... put the hose on a slow trickle.. and let it soak in for a few hours ... im talking a slow drip ... ken

The tree and the house have lived together for a while. you say nothing that causes alarm in my mind, but then again...I haven't been there, and without eyes on, this is incredibly difficult. I'd keep some different folks coming out. maybe you can do it under the guise of an estimate, maybe you'll have to pay up a time or two for on site inspections. So you ask someone to come out and look at a tree. keep the language as open as possible, because as soon as you say, what about taking it down, you have self-selected the direction of the conversation. What you're looking for is someone you will answer your questions and you feel comfortable with. everyone comes into a conversation with an agenda...everyone. but if you're talking to a guy about a tree, knowing he makes money by taking it down, and if he says he really doesn't think it's necessary, he's advising he doesn't get paid. if he say yes it should be trimmed or removed, what's his reason? do other people agree with the reasoning? There's always certifications, more of those than I care to mention, insurance, various methods of checking out contractors. you're starting something a lot of people don't really know well, which is evaluating tree health. there's a lot of people who see a tree close to a house and the only thought they have is it has to come down. I assume the house is new to you? sorry if I missed that above. unless you see something that just scares the living bejessus out of you, i'd wait to see how things look once they leaf out. if nothing else, it'll give you a sense of how specific trees and the house relate to each other, and to the yard. P.S. zero-turn mower. you still need the lawn tractor for cleaning and working, but you'll love the zero-turn for mowing.

Ed, I would agree with you that whatever gets buried has a good likelihood of being impacted or killed. However, I would strongly disagree with you that we are talking about killing half of the tree's roots. My opinion is that half (maybe more like a third) the tree's roots were affected/killed when the house was initially built and the yard was initially terraced. I have read conflicting things on poplar tree roots ( I read up on them a while back since I have two 2-foot-wide-dbh poplars flanking my house.) One thing I read was a study where they looked at pole-sized poplars and found that the poplars have a lot of roots rather close to the tree, and not a bunch of radial and evenly spaced feeder roots. I have also read that poplar roots can extend anywhere from 160 to 490 feet away from the tree. I am assuming that the area on the other side of the tree is either forest, or backyard of another house. My assumption based on this is that when Brian's house was built and the yard graded, the poplar was definitely affected, so it overcompensated the root loss on the upper slope by creating more feeder roots on the lower slope to get more moisture. As an aside that I won't get too much into, and that you may already know, there is emerging research that trees are connect by a mycorrhizal fungi network via their roots, and trees can actually share and transfer nutrients. The larger trees tend to be “nodes" in these networks. Because of this tree's size, my guess is that it has a lot of ways to get nutrients. That being said, obviously less damage is the most preferred option, and getting someone to bobcat away all if the terraced soil would probably be best. That sounds like it would be a lot of money, but maybe somebody nearby needs a lot of fill dirt for free.

Hey I wanted to append my comment from earlier since I made a mistake, Tulip Poplar wood is wind-resistant (branches don't break, break less than live oaks) but the trees are not hurricane resistant and all mature specimens I know of here, all survived Irma, are planted with some 'buddies' for mutual protection. Some good candidates I've seen perform well here are: Sweet gum (fast-growing like poplar), Southern Live Oak, Sand Live Oak, & Magnolia. I would not plant this tree in the middle of a lawn unprotected. source: University of Florida Anyway good luck with your tree :) I still think it's a good idea, just wanted to add this precaution Might also be worth evaluating hurricane wind direction when planning this. [They hit us from the east so worst/front winds we get blow south and west. siting it so it is protected from these directions could mitigate risk. also i have never seen a tree that fell pointing north from a hurricane so i might actually be onto something here lol]