If I understand correctly, this 80' row of emerald green arborvitae would be 'sandwiched' in a long, 2 foot wide row bordered by a 1 foot higher retaining wall behind, and a 2 foot drop-off by retaining wall before them. Or something like that. Consider that with a big drop-off retaining wall, during dry times you may have to do quite a bit of supplemental watering, since I assume ground water will drain out that retaining wall pretty fast. I'm not familiar with how moist your soil stays in summer. But if you ever have droughts, especially during the first couple of years getting established, get reading for a water bill. I might be tempted to 'mix it up a bit,' either with a few golden arborvitae forms here and there (e.g.: yellow ribbon arborvitae comes to mind, but there are others), a couple of Boulevard false cypress, maybe a few Blue Point Juniper if conditions are good for it there. Good visually, and that way if bag worms strike while you're out of town a week or two someday, maybe your wall won't be quite as decimated. Richard.

I have to backtrack a little and explain that when I planted the first set of trees, I was a COMPLETE newbie. I did not even have the soaker hose down at that point. I was watering them by hand about once a week thinking that would be enough. The soaker hose is that flat fabric kind and I've got two of them connected to a "Y" at the edge of my house...one length that goes down the side of the house is 25 feet, the other length goes toward the yard 50 feet. Together they make a 75 foot run and I read that a length under 100 feet should not be an issue where equal pressure is concerned...am I wrong? There is no "incline" along the length where the water ever has to go uphill, that is an optical illusion. From where the water enters the hose it only goes downhill slightly. I've been using this soaker hose all summer and it seems to do the job well, although I had to use it every day since I did not have time to put mulch down until this fall. I am thinking the reason the first batch died was from obvious lack of water before going into winter and then drying out by spring. Also not having mulch might have been a factor since we got down to -5 last winter. I have a hunch that the drying winds knocked out most of them, since my few survivors were the ones next to the house where they are somewhat protected. Which leads me to another question... What do you think of Wilt-Pruf? Could I prevent some dessication by using it? I was going to go with burlap but that is an awful lot that I would need to wrap...do these even need protection from wind if they get enough water before winter? I think in the spring I will move the one arb with the dead branch to the end of the line and replace it so I can keep the height I have going in that area (I need it there! I don't think want a window in my hedge..haha).

I live in Suffolk, Va, planted a zig zag row 5-7ft apart, about 2 years ago, going on third year now. They get part shade from trees that line the highway. We pull all growth (mostly vines, poison ivy and huge dandelions) away in the spring and fall. We did mulch with leaves the first year. Also, only watered when it didn't rain for a week and the temps were really high. These trees are really resilient, however we did have to replace two, at different points and both came from Lowes. The ones that came from the nursery are sturdy and growing amazingly fast. We fertilize with spikes twice a year and will continue to until it's just too dense to do so, with the reason being that they have a lot of competition on the other side of the fence. All the different vines are killing those trees and I can't wait until they're gone. They're mostly gumball trees and offer little in terms of protections from the highway. I hated those darn spikey balls/pods until recently. I now appreciated them because they keep the neighbor's cat out of my raised bed. lol One last thing I'd like to add, these trees give me the closest thing to instant gratification that any tree can give. They were about 3-4 ft three years ago and are now about 14 ft tall. I adore them and would never ever cut that top off. I am about to reduce the leaders on the two newer ones this week. I only got double leaders with the Lowes trees.

I am removing these roots. Almost every resource says to just make sure to plant a few feet away, and many testimonies say their new tree is doing fine years later, but even 8ft away I am hitting like 3x3 fresh lumber I can make furniture with lol. Ultimately I think this is a unique scenario because I checked youtube vids like below and although some of those trunks are much smaller than the Silver Maple, the ratio of roots-to-trunk size seems way different as if this Silver Maple made clusters of much thicker and longer roots for its size - I think it's because the sandy/clay grading soil when they built the development makes things root shallow in this location. This is how a lot of developments are built, they use cheap sandy/clay stuff for the main grading and then only about 18" of good soil on top for the grass and trees, and also I've heard this whole side of town was basically a swap or something once upon a time, google maps even shows a blue line (river) along this fence line but there's never been a river, maybe an underground spring or something hence the map's river line starts and ends with no body of water and I've replaced fence posts here when it hasn't rained and basically hit an underground river (the wood underground was solid because no oxygen is why fence posts usually rot at the base only). I removed the stumps and roots of a row of blue point junipers that were chopped down like 7 years prior and they were still solid. If the roots look like the below vids, then yes go ahead and plant close and don't even worry about that little amount of roots in fact yes it'll just add organic matter I'd prefer to leave some roots if it's sandy/clay which is what I'm doing adding small roots back into the mix and mixing the sandy sub soil with the dark rich compost topsoil. Green giants are well-rooted and unlikley to tip over from windthrow, and they might root deeper into the sandy/clay stuff just below the old maple roots, but bottom line is there's too much big roots in the way that I know it'll be better without them, I can't even dig a 1ft wide hole for a new tree without hitting something decent. Some trees cost too much to risk it IMHO at least get some of the old roots out, setting up irrigation, transporting the trees, fertilizing etc better to not risk it if the conditions and old roots are like this. Another thing is if a previous tree/roots had disease, it could enter the new tree, but as long as there's not a ton of old root mass, then maybe it's not a big deal and the soil microbes will correct it, but just wanted to note that about planting near an old stump. And well, you can't just make quick work of roots with a chainsaw because it'll dull in 5 seconds and you'll spend more time sharpening than cutting (although I might sacrifice a chain for this and test my dremel chainsaw bits for once because usually I just hand file), but it's not too too bad removing roots. It rained hard and turned my project into a pool that I bucket'd mostly out and then filled the finished areas back with soil and it was like working on quicksand but it's getting there and the farther away from the stump the easier it becomes. Sawsall pruning blades dull really fast too and I resharpen them on a bench grinder but it's still takes a while. I've been picking at them with an axe, splitting wedges etc, rain-soaked compost topsoil makes it a lot heavier and everything slippery, been going at it with a jack hammer with a sharpened chisel bit does decently. This Silver Maple stump was like 3ft wide at the base. I just removed a different maple's stump and roots from the sidewalk grass strip area to plant new sweetbay magnolia and that was about a 1ft maple stump but the ratio of those roots to the large silver maple doesn't correlate, I was able to rather easily remove the whole stump and what seems like the only main roots it put out due to being confined between the sidewalk and street compared to the large Silver Maple really put tons of big roots out. sorry so long, Another things though is Green Giants are an extremely QUICK growing tree so I would still prefer not to have even medium sized roots near them. Tree services should offer the option to grind the roots too if they're this big. The Silver maple roots I'm removing are much bigger for the trunk-to-roots ratio than these trees it seems likely because of the site conditions https://youtu.be/N3RUifC7Uo8?t=310 https://youtu.be/Fjg7ieBY7Lk?t=434 https://youtu.be/bRTIwWUg4fc?t=152 https://youtu.be/vM24klVyxFk?t=477