Recommend some trees

irishbuzz

I have recently built a boundary wall on one side of my property. It's quite a tall wall by necessity (1.8m) due to the fact that the neighboring property is a farm lane. I'm interested in planting a mix of shrubs and small-ish trees along the wall to soften it a little. The trees will be planted ~0.7m-0.9m from the wall. The soil type is clay.

For the trees, I have a few requirements and preferences.

• Must not have overly intrusive roots (so as to not compromise the wall foundations)
• Must by a single stem type tree
• Preferably round in shape or teardrop. Nothing too broad or pyramidy
• Ideally would not grow any taller than 2.5m
• Generally hardy and low maintenance
• Green leaf preferred over red leaf
• Does not need to be evergreen - not needed as a source of privacy screen
• Something that flowers would be nice

Any recommendations would be appreciated

DeWanderer

irishbuzz wrote: »

Any recommendations would be appreciated

Based on your specification, I suggest half standard trees. These would be of approx 1.5 metre height and lollipop shape. Talk to a tree nursery and try to get a mix of native trees. If they are in pots, and have been for a number of years, they'll be ok to plant even now, just run that by the nursery.
You'll need to give a quick trim every couple of years to keep shape.

The tree nursery and hopefully someone else here will give you specific tree recommendations.

DeWanderer

Btw, standards/half standards are not cheap

magicbastarder

yeah, 2.5m is more shrub sized than tree sized. you could probably get acers of that size, but again, they'd be a more expensive option, and not lollipop shaped.

irishbuzz

Of course, without knowing much about the area, I always manage to gravitate towards the expensive options!

Regarding the 2.5m height restriction. It's not so much a hard requirement that I don't want it taller. My assumption is though that if I go much bigger than this, then the root structure will likely be larger and therefore the wall could be affected.

Can I ask a stupid question? Do Half Standards eventually grow into Full Standards or are they sold in their mature state? I'm fine with buying something a little on the younger side and having it grow over the next 10+ years. Is it possible to buy a younger/smaller but 'trained' tree and save some money?

(Probably the wrong forum to be admitting this but) I don't think I'd be able to give the required attention to 'train' something like that myself. Maybe when the kids are older etc.

looksee

'Training' takes time and implies that it is old enough to have established a shape/size. If it is not full grown you would have to keep training it.

What you are suggesting sounds rather formal for what I gather is a rural setting?

The degree to which roots will affect the wall has more to do with the tree type than size (within reason). Alder, willow, birch and some others have long roots that can cause issues, but others can be reasonably near to a wall without doing any damage.

One that will be easier to keep smaller would be hawthorn - once it is established trim off all sideshoots till you have a stem and take out the leader (the long shoot that goes straight up) and you will end up with a medium height lollipop-head tree. Crab apple will grow like that without intervention and has nice blossom and fruit. Some of the smaller cherries (prunus) would suit too (don't get the one with the masses of double pink flowers, they get quite big).