Thanks for all the ideas and precations, The more and more I think about it I don't really want to hurt the trees. They have been there much longer than I have. I just bought the place and am in the process of renovating the interior. The trees are about 40 years old so I do not want to do anything to harm their integrity. I may wait until I can do the pruning and set up the mulch rings around them. They are in my yard and not in a quote unquote orchard. There is many years of neglect that I am having to try and reverse. I am going to bring out a friend that is good with the pruning to instruct me on the what, where and why I am pruning. I liked the carpet idea as I am removing all the carpet from my house as we speak. That will be a creative way to be rid of the scrap without going to a landfill. My only question with that method is what happens when the backing of the carpet lets loose and the nylon piles start getting everywhere?? Any experience like that Denniinmi??

There were roses everywhere when we bought this house, and we have been removing them one by one and giving them to friends. One friend lives on a street called Rose Circle, or something like that, and she has been good about taking the unwanted roses off our hands. I have been replacing the roses with drought tolerant plants, such as succulents and cacti, which I much prefer. Still, some roses still come back from roots that we were unable to remove, and so it is an ongoing process to get rid of them. We have kept one rose bush in the front yard that makes white flowers, and it seems to bloom all year, which is why we kept it. Also, the white flowers go better with our color schemes than the pink ones. We are trying to get rid of the pink that we inherited with the house. The first thing to go was an ornamental peach tree that attracted possums. We have replaced that with banana and heliconia - not drought tolerant plants, but they work with our existing watering system. I have a hard time throwing out orchid cuttings, but we have too many epidendrum in the back yard and no place to put all of them. I also have a bit of a hard time throwing out bromeliad cuttings, but I have no trouble at all throwing out roses, as the thorns are quite nasty. Some of the bromeliads are nasty also, and so I do not feel bad about throwing those out. If it pricks you, do not feel bad about throwing it out is my philosophy. It's nice when you can find homes for unwanted plants, but it is not nice to keep something that is getting in your way.

If you have any landscape cacti that no longer 'work' in your landscape, for whatever reason, don't kill them. Contact the Tucson Cactus & Succulent Society and/or the Central Arizona Cactus & Succulent Society- depending on where you live. Their respective websites are (sorry, can't put the www at the beginning) tucsoncactus.org/ and centralarizonacactus.org/index.htm Call or email them with your problem and they may be able to provide some help. If you would like to volunteer- help is always appreciated. When a new development is planned, they try to persuade the developers to allow volunteers to go in ahead of the bulldozers and rescue some of the plants that would be destroyed. Permit tags are purchased from the state and the rescued plants are sold for little more than the cost of the tag. Sometimes there isn't much notice or time before the bulldozers arrive so volunteers are always appreciated. The volunteers of course get first choice of the rescued plants. More importantly, if you have any contacts in development or landscape or know of some acres about to go under the blade, let your C&S society know! Or volunteer to save some of these natives. In Phoenix email Thanks to AZTransplant and Hawaiisam for this great info!

Tree roots grow into soil added within their root zones whether disturbed or not. Adding soil when making new plantings under trees serves to get the companion plants started. After that they still end up living with tree roots all through their own root masses. Maples are always competitive, with heavy shading and dense rooting both serving to exclude plants that are not specifically adapted to such conditions. Smaller growing maples such as Japanese maples are less problematic merely because they are smaller growing. Well developed examples of even these will also often prove to be hard to garden under unless using only particular kinds of suitable plants. Hostas for instance.