Past experience of Rhus typhina showed me that it will behave perfectly well for years and years - until you remove a branch or two, prune it, call it what you will. From that moment onwards the tree will decide it is under threat and it needs to procreate and it will do so by sending up suckers for the rest of its days.
A friend's father grew a row of them along the edge of a lawn - he was a gardener at The Big House in the next village - we were not allowed to sit on the wall alongside the garden in case we knocked off a branch and triggered the suckering. In all the years I knew that garden those Stag's Horn Sumachs never ever sent up a sucker into that immaculate lawn. When he died and his widow decided those trees should be pruned .................. the following year the first suckers appeared and soon the lawn was ruined.
I would love to grow a similar row along our front boundary - they would suit this house so well - but our boundary is passed every day by children going to school and I'm not prepared to stand guard every day ensuring that not a twig gets knocked - so we will not grow Rhus typhina
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
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Correction. Pesky suckers in my lawn ARE worrying!
Thank you for the tip Verdun. will pass this info on to the lawn man (not my dept). We spotted loads at the weekend.b
Past experience of Rhus typhina showed me that it will behave perfectly well for years and years - until you remove a branch or two, prune it, call it what you will. From that moment onwards the tree will decide it is under threat and it needs to procreate and it will do so by sending up suckers for the rest of its days.
A friend's father grew a row of them along the edge of a lawn - he was a gardener at The Big House in the next village - we were not allowed to sit on the wall alongside the garden in case we knocked off a branch and triggered the suckering. In all the years I knew that garden those Stag's Horn Sumachs never ever sent up a sucker into that immaculate lawn. When he died and his widow decided those trees should be pruned .................. the following year the first suckers appeared and soon the lawn was ruined.
I would love to grow a similar row along our front boundary - they would suit this house so well - but our boundary is passed every day by children going to school and I'm not prepared to stand guard every day ensuring that not a twig gets knocked - so we will not grow Rhus typhina
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
That's spot on, because last month lawn man knocked a low branch clean off as he was mowing so enthusiastically. This tree is clever...