Collect the cones of your weeping spruce next month. As they dry they will open and winged seed will come out when you tap the cones. This will be an interesting project for someone with time on their hands. You will have a variety of seedling growth habits however most of them will be standard Norway Spruce.

Weeping Norway spruce, beautiful tree. I wouldn't do a thing to it. Think; less is more, if it ain't broke don't fix it, benign neglect, don't mess with perfection, etc. etc.

Is that your place? You've got some nice OLD stuff there!

Seeds can be harvested, I doubt they'd come true ie, make weepers. Your tree is reproduced by grafting. Most likely you'd get straight Norway spruce, a potential 100' plus giant, but, one never knows...

Thank you sam_md and kentrees12. Yes, Weeping Norway Spruce. ok.

We are a condo assoc with a very tight budget and I took on the role of improving stormwater runoff and curb appeal. The old stuff is from mid 1970's. The style is loosely mid century modern and the grounds followed, but over the years changes were made that varied from that goal and affected the look and stormwater runoff. We are in a valley. Addition of non permeable surfaces above does not help either.

Any other suggestion on the area shown are welcome.

Could anyone suggest resources on growing trees from seeds? How to tell if the are weepers or traditional? Maybe I can recruit a neighbor or two for the project.

Thank you for the feedback

April

google: growing Picea abies from seed ...

the latin always helps with searches ...

the next question ... what are you going to do with seedlings .. its going to take upwards of 5 years ... before they are a foot or two tall ... considering you have no experience ... i am thinking they will grow like annuals or perennials ... they wont.. they work in tree time ...

ken

I am patient.

I personally would take a backhoe to it but..........

looks healthy, harvest seeds when they open.

Before you contemplate any major maintenance...look at the taller trees there. Get a rough measurement of the height. Look up how much it would cost to buy a tree of that height and have it installed. The older trees are treasures that would take a lot of time or money to replace...and replacement trees that height would likely have inferior root systems to trees of that height that grew in place, and thus would be more vulnerable to drought and wind. Remember that when people start telling you to take trees down to fit in with the current fad.

If you are growing trees from seed, no need to limit yourself to trees on your property. A walk through the woods or a deal with your botanic garden can yield a lot of seeds from a lot of interesting trees. I find white oak and hickory are the best bets...it's hard to transplant mature ones or find them for sale, but they are great trees that grow well from seed that is readily available.

As far as general storm water maintenance...wisconsontom is the person to ask. Draw up a map showing North, the location of hills and seasonal swamps, the direction water flows, the prevailing wind direction, and any unsightly views. It's nice to have all of this information in one place when you are making plans.

edlincoln. Thank you for the thought provoking advice. I like our cranky old trees, respect their role in stormwater management and erosion control. Now I have a more detailed and succinct reason to hold onto them. I will try to recruit some neighbors in my - grow trees from seeds projects. Will look into white oak and hickory.

Thanks for the lead on stormwater maintenance. I will follow up later in the week. Monday and Tuesday we are cleaning up brush at tree line and Wednesday I'll be at Musikfest ( local 10 day event).

wisconsitom. Thank you for the response! I have to run out the door, will respond later or tonight.

That's why I like to focus "plant from seed" efforts on trees that don't transplant well or aren't readily available from nurseries.

She doesn't sound like she is prone to taking down trees willy-nilly..I gave her that advice because some folks who look at these things from a...grahics design standpoint will probably advise her to do that at some point.

Thank you for your input. I am ridiculously reluctant to remove original 1970 trees or even the over pruned constantly messy looking yews for 2 reasons. Water absorption and laziness. Both due to the BIG root systems.

For the yews I removed old thick branches to allow light and when I saw buds on the interior of a few I chopped them to above the lowest 1 or 2 areas of growth, added ground cover and annuals and watching. Does this make sense? I'd like to turn them into shrubs that are pruned once a year and have lush texture.

Stormwater management. Many of the original swales have not been maintained and filled in a bit due to tree root bumps, leveling etc and I am working to correct. We also get more stormwater from higher areas due to more non permeable surfaces.

I wanted to grow from seeds to get others interested, and thought such a unique tree would be a draw.

If anyone would be willing to look I will organize and present info on one of my 4 worse problem areas. Is that something I could do on Trees?