Underground wires and shallow rooted plants ...

Hi all! I'm wondering if anyone might be able to recommend bushes and trees, preferably evergreen, which are suitable for planting over or around underground house wires.

For some reason, an adjacent home owner has begun clearing the thick area of mature pines that divided our properties. I cringe every time i hear the chain saw, and little by little, their lights and home are being revealed to me. Far be it for me to sound anti-social, but i've grown accustomed to that protective swatch of pine on my eastern side, and i'm finding this transition to be quite jarring. Therefore, i'll need to make a plan to somehow plant up that border.

Problem is, there's not a lot of space between the road and my front door, and all the underground power lines and whatnot run along the area i'd most need to plant up. Does anyone know of a way to create a shallow-rooted thicket that won't interfere with the wires?

Betula is fairly shallow rooting, and although diciduous, can be planted very closely to great effect. Jacquemontii is probably the whitest of the barks, and if you used a few of the others - albosinensis is my favourite, beautiful chalky surface over faded red - mixed in, it could be stunning. You could underplant with a variety of bulbs and coums.

At the Tate Modern in London, they have done a stunning installation of extremely tightly planted betula of varying age trees and it is exquisite. I'll try and find an image.

However, planting shallow rooted trees does have one draw back - as they age they do have a tendency to be a bit wind prone.

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://k43.pbase.com/u18/nickclarke/large/39110112.stpaulsfinal.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.pbase.com/nickclarke/image/39110112&h=591&w=800&sz=124&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=pAjgmW6ZdTNcGM:&tbnh=106&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3DSilver%2BBirch%2BTate%2BModern%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

http://static.flickr.com/78/223149500_bf4a42e2ca_t.jpg

This message was edited Feb 24, 2007 7:17 AM

I'm surprised they didn't put those wires in a conduit like a pvc pipe. I'd look into having a conduit installed so that they are all together in one pipe. Then you can do all kinds of gardening around them and not have to worry about the wires.

Thanks guys! I'll see what happens. I was going to put a garden bed up there at some point anyway, but i wasn't thinking i would have to plant it up with any kind of screening as an agenda. For now, i'm just gonna pray they don't remove anymore trees .... :)