If you want to get rid of your lawn there are other options rather than just allowing the property to go back to nature.

Take the time to plan out the conversion so that the garden remains attractive and usable to the degree you wish. Include hardscaping (paths, walkways, paved seating areas, etc.) and instead of a "forest", choose and site your trees carefully and add to this planting smaller woodland plants including shrubs, perennials and groundcovers (native species or not - your choice).

Once the lawn is gone you may even want to bring in additional soil to contour the property with berms to provide some dimension and interest rather than just a flat plain. And add rocks/landscape boulders, if those interest you. Keep the plantings low close to the house - this will avoid foundation issues, excessive shading and the potential for falling limbs causing damage.

Viper, once your trees are planted, merely discontinuing leaf removal will help to get the site's soil on the track toward a more woodsy condition. Forest soils are high in fungi, most other plant community types have soils dominated by bacteria. So do leave things lying on the ground as "food" for these fungi. There's actually a great deal more that I or many others here could say, but perhaps if you limit the scope a bit-things you want to happen, things you don't, etc. it may help us discuss this. For my part, few things in nature are more interesting than forest succession. But that's a process and I think you want a "product" so to speak. Anyway, give us a few more clues about where you're at.

+oM

Your comment caught my eye because I am currently reforesting large areas of my 2 acre property. (It was originally horse pasture, but eventually became mowed lawn after the demise of our horses.) The first part of our reforestation project happened naturally when pines and other trees colonized a hill on the back end of our property, seeded down from old forest bordering our land. Because of the slope, this area could not easily be mowed so we let it grow up. There was an old cow/horse path that we kept clear, and we found that we like the woods, the privacy and peacefulness they afford, and the wildlife they attract. We decided to expand the forest into a horseshoe-shaped area with two arms coming down from the wooded hill, and a mowed area in the middle where my flower beds and veggie patch can get sun. I am currently in the process of creating these arms of our forest.

As you mention, large trees with extensive root systems being near a house foundation are a concern. I have only one tree in our front yard, a small crabapple, far enough from the foundation to never cause a problem. Additionally I keep any trees a good distance from the well and the septic system. I would suggest that you could plant shrubs near your home, small fruit trees behind the bushes, and larger trees behind the fruit trees, creating a graduated landscape from the smaller near your foundation back into larger trees.

Gardengal has some good suggestions. My own land is rich in diversity, with hills, slopes, and a swampy area near a brook, but if yours is all on the flat, adding some variety via building up soil to hills or adding rocks is something that will make your woods more interesting as the trees grow up. You might bring in some fallen logs to line part of a pathway or just to add interest and attract wildlife. You will find that your forest will become an eco-system of animals and leaf litter that will enrich the soil and nourish the trees. At first I tried to keep our piney woods very neat by picking up deadfall and keeping branches trimmed, but now I confine my branch trimming to the pathways, and pile dead fall in other areas where it adds to the eco-cycle.

Gardengal's suggestion for creating pathways through the woods is perhaps the most important, and I can't stress enough that while you are planting the trees is the time to do this! Be sure to allow room so that your path will not become too narrow to walk on when the young trees expand in girth! We had the one path through the woods, but decided later to add a second lower path, and by that time the blackberry brambles and young trees had taken over! It was a struggle to bushwhack through that jungle, and had we waited even another year, I doubt we could have cleared that path without help. I still look at the stumps from the trees we cut and marvel at how quickly they grew. Anyway we learned our lesson and now are marking out trails through the area where we are planting trees.

For the health of the trees, it is best not to mow the grass under and around new seedlings, if you can do this where you are. Good luck and be sure to post some photos when your new forest takes shape.

two thoughts...

be nice to know where you are ...

second.. define your foundation system.. age.. condition ... basement.. etc ..

trees do NOT carry chisels nor drills.. and work there way into an intact foundation or plumbing system ...

but they do act advantageously in taking advantage [is that repetitive?] .. of pre existing problems... such as already leaking sewer lines.. and already cracked and unstable foundations or basements ...

more facts if you want more specific answers ...

ken

I got about 5 acres of lawn space in PA zone 6...the house is old farmhouse built in 1918 with a stone foundation....its just a freakin monoculture of grass at this point thanks to the previous owner....anyway I plan on ordering soon for spring planting. I figure I am going to need 500-1000 trees,...perhaps more.My goal is to have a complete forest within the next 20 years or so.

Well, your rather exuberant planting efforts will indeed "capture" the site for forest rather quickly. But then, long after that, the site will keep changing. This is not at all a bad thing. Some trees will grow better than others, some will be inhibited by others, etc. etc. In spedigrees' post above, he/she mentions much "volunteer" action, that is, the moving into the site of tree seedlings from seed deposited by surrounding vegetation. This also happens, in some cases, via root suckering, for species that do that. This process is absolutely the best-case scenario if one has it happening (although in fairness, in today's world of invasive plants, these volunteers can just as easily be something you won't want to have there), but to me, it sounds like you have no adjacent forest for this to happen. If I were you, I'd ponder forest succession. Sure, you can go right ahead with "climax" tree types, those species that tend to dominate forest stands in your area after hundreds of years have gone by. But for geeks like me, it's more fun and more exciting to actually set the conditions such that a more full-range succession can take place. Very briefly-and I don't know where you will be operating-it goes something like grasses/forbs, ie meadow or prairie-shrubs-pioneer trees-climax trees. Please do realize, I've drastically truncated the totality that is this natural process, to try and fit it on one page! But in this system, waves of species come, do their thing for a while, possibly shade themselves (actually, their offspring) out, giving rise to a new class of species that have some shade-tolerance. Then, there is something called a long-term seral stage, a stage that's not really climax per se, but is long-lasting and seems permanent from our human perspective. Where I live, the big pine forests were an example of one such long-term seral stage. They were just one plant community within a series, but they could last for many hundreds of years.

Anyway, I better quit! +oM

be nice to know where you are ...

IT REALLY MATTERS

spring planting season is nearly over ...

you ought to be thinking about fall planting season ... at least for half your project

in MI.. the soil conservation district offices offer spring and fall plant sales ... extremely cheap ... in the size you ought to be planting on this scale ...

wonder where you are????

ken

BTW .... you need no more than about 50 trees .. for 5 acres ...

dont waste your money ...

ken

I would not let it naturally go through the succession process. It'll quickly turn into a dense impassable thicket. It will remain so until some trees get large enough to shade out & kill some of the underlying thicket, but that will take quite some years. The eventual forest will be dense enough that the trees with have really tall trunks with a lollipop like canopy way up high. I greatly prefer the look of more open-grown trees, with a large canopy starting much lower. A fairly heavily treed property and a 'true forest' are not the same thing.

I am in Lancaster, PA

viper, I sympathize & agree w/your intents. You can simply greatly restrict your mowed areas, let the other grass grow & do nothing else -- the easiest option. If you want trees quickly, you prob'ly need to buy bulk numbers of small trees from, say, Musserforests and get some help from a number of friends for a "planting" party to get them in over a weekend. You don't have to do all 5 acres at once -- concentrate on the unmowed areas nearest your house first and do some more in succeeding years.

You still have alittle time left this spring if you hurry. If not, relax & wait for next fall or spring.

We are doing the same thing here. We bulldozed where an old barn had been, and that freed up a lot of space. First see where you like to walk, and mow those areas to keep a path open.Plant stuff that doesn't get too big close to the house. We are in PEI, so that means red berried elder and shrub roses next to the house. Elders bring lots of birds and the red berries are pretty till all eaten. Roses are variable, depending on whether you buy started plants or pick hips and plant the roses from the seeds in the hips. A bit further from the house, lining the driveway, you can have bigger trees, we have red oaks, white elms and lindens...tilias.

Really big stuff can go far from the house or cars and outbuildings....american chestnut, more elms, yellow birch, sugar maple. It all depends on how far from buildings and cars you can plant.
Plant what you like, and if it's windy where you are, include some softwoods for winter shelter. Prunus avium grows fast, lovely cherries for us and the birds, gets monumental in our site. What grows where you are?
You can always do a few nut trees, we have butternuts and carpathian ones, but there must be something local where you are too.

True enough (drrich), going through-or approximating-natural succession will result in a number of years of a very "brushy" landscape, and maybe for this project, it's not the best way to go. I will warrant though, that if OP really wants a "forest" and not just a well-treed yard, this will get her/him there like no other process. It's the difference between something happening organically, an intrinsic result of wind, rain, sun, and plant species, and something which, while nice, will always and obviously be a man-made landscape. Also true-each successional stage goes by quicker than we humans are apt to think, save-obviously-for the final or "climax" stage, which is by definition a stable and long-lasting situation.

Mostly, I just like talking about forest succession. It's ultimately not important to me what happens in this one select case. But for those who already have, or are on their way to achieving, a deep connection with the natural world, few processes are more rewarding than to take a piece of land and with your guidance and that of others, steer it into one or another pattern of natural development. You'll never look at an old abandoned field the same way again!

+oM

Legacy thought. An attractively landscaped plot with open-grown trees of desirable species may be kept, at least in part, by whoever buys or inherits the property after your death. So if the possibility of a tree you plant someday becoming a huge white oak, etc…, appeals, that's nice. A random hodgepodge of whatever-popped-up in a successional stage is more likely to get 'mowed' to make way for a lawn or garden after you die.

wisconsitom, natural succession works, but if the "wild" area of my lot is any indication, succession in thick grass is very slow -- especially for trees. Goldenrod, asters, milkweed & wild rose invade, but the only trees so far able to germinate are the nuisance Siberian elms & a black cherry and black walnut or two. And that's after 10 yrs.

Of course, one needs to apply proper methodology. if a thick carpet of non-native turf grass is in the way, common sense would dictate removal of same, which, BTW, can be accomplished with supreme ease. Also of equivalent common sense-the fact that what shows up via natural regeneration is hugely influenced by what species hover nearby. I'm not suggesting miracles here. There must be something from which progeny can arise. As to drrich-it is beyond apparent you haven't a clue what I'm talking about. If you've never even seen a forest, it is going to be hard to describe same to you. While randomness is indeed an intrinsic factor, hodge-podge is not. I sense a deep-seated dislike of nature in your response. That's not only too bad for you, it means your replies to the OP in this thread can be summarily discounted.

+oM

If you are going for a house in the woods look, get a huge piece of paper and draw your house where it is situated. Draw the appoximate shape of your parcel, where you pond might go, then some paths. Take a pencil and rough in some softwoods for a sheltered bit.........you can plant those first, this spring. On PEI, it is good to wait for the fall rains to plant hardwoods, perhaps it is like that at your location too. Here, early Sept gives trees lots of time to root before winter. You'll find the voles and bunnies eat some of your trees, even with cages or mouse guards..........so you will be replanting some for a few years anyway. Then you will find some trees don't do well growing next to each other, yellow birch doesn't like being too close to a sugar maple, or sugar maple to a clump or two of goldenrod. Sometimes a tree dies for no obvious reason, so don't feel bad, just plant another one. Don't plant huge trees, as they will be all top and no bottom....not enough roots.

Softwoods can be as close planted as 12 feet, if you expect some to die, or 20 plus feet if you can replace or cage them to protect them. They grow faster than you think, 5 years from tiny seedling to chin high, then once rooted in, perhaps 3 feet of new leader each spring. (class 2 land, no irrigation)

Sugar maples will easily do 4 feet each year, on a good site, so will american chestnut....beech a little slower but a lovely tree. if you can find a clean stand of beech, ones with no canker, it's inherited, so the seedlings from two clean parents will be resistant too. Elms will do great around your pond, don't mind wet feet in the spring.

Learning what grows on your land is a lot of fun, so try whatever you actually like and see how it does. if really not suited for the site, you'll find out and have to plant something else................have fun.

When hardwoods are planted for timber purposes, in other words, in a style which closely mimics natural stands, they are spaced no more than ten feet in either direction, closer being considered better. This OP is seeking a "forest" look, not a well-treed lawn look. By planting with close spacing, the crowns of these developing hardwoods will be forced upward a la forest trees, and will be narrower and lacking in the enormous side branches we see so often in "yard trees". All of my responses to this thread are based on that which the OP states at the outset. If he or she just wants lots of trees, than any number of threads here will serve. Some arboricultural textbooks have advocated for enormous distances between "amenity trees" being an absolute requirement. This, once again, is about something other than forests. Forest trees routinely grow quite close together. I have in my woods several examples of Thuja occidentalis intertwined with Betual papyrifera, partners for life. Really quite amazing to see, and since it happened in that small area not once, not twice, but several times, there must be some association between the two that we are ignorant of.

Jocelyn, is that Prince Edward Island then? I see references to some fine northern trees in your post. Yellow birch, for instance, has got to be one of the coolest trees ever. I've got friends in Nova Scotia also, and it is fun to compare notes on the natural flora of the area. But I digress. OP, I'm sure I'm bending you further and further away from what you may have originally thought you were after, but I can't resist just one more tidbit about forests, and that is, that by far, most of the living tissue in forests is in the ground and is not plants but fungi. Fungal tissues-these are good things-outweigh all other lifeforms in the forest, and whereas we once not too long ago thought these things a sideshow, more and more we're finding out they're the main thing that's happening in these life communities. I'll quit now.

+oM

Yes, I'm on PEI. As for fungi, you can always take a shovel of earth from the woods and put it in your planting holes, to get things started. Around here, wide spacing for trees works fine, as there are lots of volunteers that wildlife spreads for free. I think I had a tree each 30 feet or so to start, but that changed real quick, grin. Elders pop up like weeds, blue jays plant oaks, ironwood pops up unbidden.....white birch follows the wind pattern...it's all good. Spruces tend to come in in big clumps, you end up having to get a shovel under them and spread them out a bit. If you like understory plants, you might find the hazels come in on their own, or perhaps it will be service berry or chokecherry............depends on what's around. Just don't be too quick to weed each spring, till you see what has seeded in each time.

Wisconsitom, I've enjoyed some of your posts and made no personal attacks against you, so where your rude hostility came from is a mystery. Hodgepodge can refer to a random assortment.

People have free will. Anyone here can discount any replies to this thread they wish, including yours.

I've seen forest. Spent quite some years living in rural Arkansas. We have some in southeastern KY, to. The field behind our home seems to've been abandoned the past few years; I can look at succession sitting on the back deck.

I happen to like nature. Doesn't mean every manifestation of it is what I want in my yard.

As for the forested yard vs. the heavily treed yard, I believe many people at 1st don't consciously think of the difference. I prefer a less densely planted stand of thicker, broader canopy medium & large trees, purposefully sited to achieve a more pleasing aesthetic. The approach is worthy of consideration, and I believe more likely to be conserved by future owners in times to come.

The free exchange of different ideas on thi forum offers posters more possibilites to consier in choosing what's right for them. Your preferences didn't bother me. I've just persented a different view point. Live & let live.

Richard.

Quite right Richard. I think the term is overwrought. Never been absolutely certain the meaning of that term, but I think I get a little overwrought on some of these things. I do apologize-I got a little carried away. You make some good points, especially as to what future residents are apt to put up with, whatever the intentions and outcome of viper114.

Jocelyn, your suggestion to import a bit of forest soil is a good one I think. Nobody seems to quite know the extent to which we must introduce these mycorrhyzal organisms into our systems, the overwhelming evidence thus far being quite disappointing when proprietary materials are used in average planting sites. But straight-up forest soil may be a different animal..er, fungus.

As to spacing, you're both right and wrong in my experience. And once again, I may be taking this to a place far beyond the initial inquiry, but for good form-viper's not stated that to be a goal-especially with hardwoods, closer spacing will get you there. A range of techniques and standards can be used here however, to achieve something like the intended results. If one is able to identify the numerous volunteers that show up, so much the better.

+oM

If the OP's goal was to reduce maintenance by converting his land to woods, then he needs to rethink what he is doing.

I have had several wooded lots, and find that to keep the nice parklike appearance, it takes a lot of work. trimming, removing dead branches and trees, etc. It also takes a lot of time to keep the undesirables under control, poison ivy, poison oak, grape vines, greenbrier, and similar plants. If you have paths it will take work to maintain them also.

I am not complaining as I like to spend a morning in the woods trimming, remove down branches, dead trees, etc. I find it relaxing.

my intent is not to remove anything.....if branches and trees fall I am just going to leave them there to rot and to replenish the soil. It would also give other critters like salamanders a home....believe it or not poison ivy is actually a good plant for wildlife.. it provides berries for songbirds. So I guess what I really want is a miniature wilderness rather than a park.

Thanks, Wisconsitom; no harm done.

Viper114, what kind of larger neighborhood do you live around? Is it an area outside of town, where there's considerable forest nearby, or are you surrounded by farms, or what? Just trying to get a sense of your surroundings. That may have an impact on long term prospects.

Quite right you are viper-even such accursed plants as poison ivy have their place at nature's table. They are native and are, as you say, food for a number of bird species. Decent-looking plants too, especially their fall coloration and white fruit.

Now that you've updated us on your intentions, I think some of the stuff I wrote will be of use. A true patch of forest neither needs nor wants anyone picking up fallen tree parts, etc. etc. So if you, as the owner/user, are able to tolerate such, that can be allowed to proceed. A little off-topic but this reminds me of when there's a big blowdown in forest country. A tornado went through a wide swath of the Nicolet National Forest just north of me here a few years back. It really did tear down a lot of forest. Yet, it was only we people who needed to "clean it up". The woods couldn't have cared less, and in the fullness of time that is nature, it would have ultimately made no difference whatsoever to that area that hoards of loggers descended on it and "salvaged" the downed timber. Not saying they shouldn't have done so, just that it suited our human needs, not those of the forest itself.

+om

I evolved along with my forest from seeking a "park like" appearance to embracing a self-sustaining mini-wilderness. Now the only parts I clean up by removing dead or fallen branches, are the trails running through the forest. The amount of trail cleanup has dwindled as the forest has created its own floor of needles and leaf litter and shaded out much of the vegetation that I once had to mow. Good luck with your wilderness area, viper. It's a fun process to watch.

Another thing worth a mention is diversity. I began by envisioning an all evergreen forest and by culling other species that cropped up, but have since realized the importance of varied tree species and now have maples, birch, hickory, and other native saplings in amongst the pine and spruce. Besides being more natural, diversity will protect the forest as a whole, should a blight damage a single species of tree.

Viper, stocking recommendations for "afforestation", that is, planting a forest where none currently exists, is right around 900 trees/acre, with the understanding that the finish stand will not have this much density. IOW's, you plan for some not making it. If you insist-not saying you do, but if-on larger-dimension stock, you will be forced to plant fewer trees per acre, as well as spend much more $$. Maybe it's just because I've done a fair amount of afforestation and had almost unbelievably good results thus far, I'd advocate going with seedlings or plugstock materials. I kid you not-trees we planted two springs back-these things were quite a bit smaller than a new #2 pencil-are in many cases already up above the "weed layer", so IOW's, pushing 4 and 5 feet! I even saw one of my larch from that planting, already broomhandle sized, was attractive enough to a buck deer to now be little more than a roughed-up stick. 2 years in the ground! Now every species will not put on height increment the way hybrid larch does, but my pines are doing very nearly as well, with only spruce seeming to take longer to get started. And even among my spruce from earlier years' plantings, many put on 4 ft. of height growth last year and just as much the year before! So once they do get established, they're very fast to grow as well.

You of course, mention other species but I offer this just to showcase some very rapid growth, again, from very tiny starter plants.

+oM

This is a section of a "real" forest that I've enjoyed watching for almost 4 decades. It has several un-park elements: rotting logs, falling trees, dead branches, and a randomly spaced diversity of trees. I love the "twin brothers, different mothers", a Beech and a Red Oak.

Very nice view. But doesn't Walmart have to put their next parking lot there?

+oM

What comes up and what aspect it creates varies with site conditions. If I were doing this I would look at natural vegetation in similar looking locations in the same region, read forestry reports about what is typical. Soil characteristics and light exposure (north facing vs. south facing slopes etc.) can have dramatic effects on what is able to get started and persist. In my area for instance alder and salmon-berry dominate where it is on the damp side and salal (Gaultheria shallon) and Douglas fir indicate where it is higher and drier. Often there are hummocks of the latter vegetation surrounded by the former on properties where there is a lot of moisture near the surface due to impeded drainage or horizontal movement of water. (Of course, where this blockage of drainage is bad enough we have willows, spirea and open standing water).

Wild plant associations are so tied to specific environmental factors that it was possible for the University of British Columbia to produce a print field guide called Indicator Plants of Coastal British Columbia to be used by foresters to assess timber crops growth potential using which native plant species were already present on a plot.

This is what happens when you plant a few trees and then let nature fill in the openings.

Great post with wonderful advice, thank you. I also like the house in the forest look.