Figs root from cuttings very easily for some people. If there are any branches near the ground you can just pin them down and bury part of them with soil and they will root in themselves. After that you just snip them off the mother tree and dig them up. My loquat does send up "suckers" but they aren't from the roots, they're from the very base of the tree. They can be very hard to get to root. Out of a dozen I can usually get one to take root and that usually takes a full year. It works best to damage the stem first, let the tree start to heal, then mix some rooting hormone with damp sterile potting media and wrap it around the wound with aluminum foil and rubber bands. Check it every couple of months. When the foil pouch is full of roots you can safely cut the branch off the tree. I have been able to root 4 or 5 foot branches this way (kind of amazing considering how small the amount of roots are compared to the size of the branch). If you can dig down and expose the sucker you may be able to scar it and pack it with hormone/potting soil and then rebury it and wait for roots. I have had no success with soft or green branches, it has to be woody and over a year old. Seeds work almost as fast and are much easier.

There is a product called Bio-Barrier which uses a system of controlled release antiroot chemical (for want of a better term)which is attached to a flexible sheet in little nodules. This is pretty widely used under driveways and sidewalks. It does work (for how long is another matter) but requires a lot of excavation and careful placement. I'm not at all familiar with the trees you want to use, but anything with roots this close to a foundation is courting future difficulties in my opinion. Bio-Barrier or something like it in a trench on the foundation side may indeed work, but it would involve a lot of digging and considerable expense. Digging right next to any foundation is never a terribly good idea anyway.

Mike, I had two 50 ft. lengths of drip hoses wound in, out and around the plants with mulch covering them - all throughout the garden in the veggie garden. The mulch was piled on 8 inches thick or thicker under and around them. I put covers over the tomatoes in late July through August. I have good well water, so no chlorine that can damage plants. Notwithstanding all that I did, when temps reached 110-120, everything just turned brown, and then blister beetles ate what was left. I had tall, dark green, beautiful corn plants with 2-3 huge ears on each plant, but upon checking them, they had few developed kernels. Total loss. I planted more than one hundred tomatoes (seven varieties), corn, beans, cantaloupe, watermelon, bell peppers, three types of hot peppers, Red bells, zucchini, and onions. Normally I get enough to can, freeze, eat fresh and sell at the Farmer's Market & Health Food stores and still have enough to donate to the Food Bank. Not last year. The only tomatoes I got were a handful from the plants I grew in large pots, but only a few. They were sure good though. Cherokee Purples were especially yummy and the Lemon Boys. I think I got about 20 tomatoes altogether. I got more than everyone else around here. Their plants kicked it in June and July. I did get some okra from the plants in the smaller, lower garden and a few pitifully small Early Girl tomatoes, and a pretty good harvest of Jalapenos in September when it cooled down a bit, but that was all. I put so much work into it and expense. But it was just too hot. It was like standing inside a furnace ever day. I lost several small trees, one large weeping willow and several Eponymous shrubs. And what the heat didn't kill, the voles did, chewing the roots off several of my roses. What a horrible year! Sorry to go on about it...

First, I'm not an expert. But, looking around at all the houses with trees and shrubbery planted pretty close to them, its hard to imagine that roots are much of a problem to a foundation. Also, even a huge russian sage is not a big plant compared to a lot of foundation plantings, and I doubt that their roots have any kind of super powers that we should be in fear of. I'm sure that a big enough tree close enough to a house, especially if the house is built on a slab, could cause a problem, but you're not anywhere near being in that situation For whatever it's worth,I wouldn't worry about it at all, if it were me. ThinMan