A Stumpery at Garden in a City!

And now we come to the Garden in a City stumpery. When I started writing the first post about stumps, this was only a gleam in my eye, as they say. I’ve been fretting for several years about the two large trees in the back garden. They provide a wonderful dappled sunlight throughout the day, around which the character of the back garden has been built.

The overall theme is meant to be green and white, but who could resist a few wild geraniums, and I don’t know when that yellow corydalis was added, but it is very happy. So green, white, lavender and yellow.

Both were planted when the house was built, in 1940, and are exactly the kind of fast-growing but short-lived (for a tree) trees favored by contractors. Anchoring a small bed to the back right of the yard is a silver maple, which has long since lost to its shape due to trimming of dead branches.

I love that Bowman’s root! You can’t see it here, but in the photo above there is a large goatsbeard. There’s another dwarf variety behind this Bowman’s root. Two goats and Jason decided we needed a third one, a bridge and a troll.

In the far left corner of the yard is a Siberian elm, still with some graceful limbs, but gradually losing them. Jason used this corner as a wildlife refuge, and left piles of sticks and branches and leaves there. I suppose that is where the possums live, and maybe a few of the many rabbits that inhabit our yard.

Here Addie and I are enjoying a gentle summer day, and there’s my son Daniel, having a work-from-home day on my patio. That’s the pagoda dogwood just beside him, and a bit further to the right, the Siberian elm. The back corner is maybe 16′ square.

Not necessarily the best photo of the back corner, but a fine photo of the uses of a garden full of dappled sunlight.

A few years ago, I was standing by the back gate when a huge branch, six or seven inches in diameter, fell out of the silver maple with no warning. So while I am in no hurry to get rid of these trees, I have a clear understanding of why they shouldn’t be kept too long. Of course, when they go, that will be the end of the dappled light. One corner of my brain has been worried about falling branches (two have fallen from the neighbor’s trees in the past few years) and another corner has been fretting about the future of dappled sunlight, shady-loving plants, and our wonderful backyard haven.

After Jason was gone, there was no one to share the worry and the planning, and even more reason, it seemed, to fear change in the garden. The problem-solving part of my brain knew that I needed a new vision for the backyard, something that I could be excited about and look forward to, in order to counterbalance the worry.

Also beautiful in the fall light! This is from 2020, a few lost branches ago. You can see several stumps where branches were removed.

But I did not have that vision until I saw the two stumperies this past summer. Of course, I am in no rush to cut down the trees, and the arborist who did the trimming this year thinks they have a few good years left. For awhile, I thought my vision was mainly for daydreams.

Before the arborists came out this fall to perform the latest amputation, I mentioned my new idea to Kasey, the head of Vivant Gardens. She was quite enthusiastic about the idea of a stumpery.

The tree limb in question was long and sinuous, and I pictured it lying out of sight along the back fence, awaiting further developments. Ha! I had no ability to comprehend the size of a tree limb thirty feet above my head. It was too big to come down in one piece, and the sinuous part was too long to be safely moved into the back corner.

The sinuous part of the branch is 16′ long; the rest of the branch is stacked by the tree trunk in the next photo.

Yep, those logs were part of this branch, too. Yikes!

Before it was cut, it hung over my neighbors’ yard, and they called it the dragon. You can see why it felt menacing!

Sooner than I anticipated, this looks like the beginnings of a stumpery! The arborists and I made sure the long log was well-positioned so that it would not shift and possibly hurt Addie (or anyone else).

It looks pretty good in the winter, too, and you can see that plenty of small animals are finding passage into the back corner. Now I just need to ask the arborists to keep an eye out for an actual stump for me, a nice big octopus. I’m pondering ferns and mosses in the meanwhile.

I’ll keep you posted as the situation develops. What do you think?