Does anyone know anything about Conifers?

[Sunbeam]

We moved in to our new home 12 months ago & have inherited some 30 foot + conifers - they line the front of our garden (most of garden at the front of the house) and make a fab windbreak (we are surrounded on 3 sides by fields) and give us lots of privacy from the road, but they are too huge, the grass doesn't grow under them , the earth is like dust; the sun disappears behind them at approx 7pm in the summer then the garden goes cold...

We've been quoted £350 to chop them back by a passing tradesman (insurance ??) but I wondered whether we could do them ourselves - I know with conifers that if you cut the old wood then they don't grow back, but how difficult are they to do yourself? Has anyone ever tackled such tall ones ? If yes, then whats your advice?? I want to bring them down to approx 9 foot if poss.

[Alice]

Sunbeam, the conifers will grow back after being cut at a rate of about 1 metre a year. £350 sounds cheap to me unless you want to do it yourself. Do you have the equipment and know how. As for insurance, what is the risk? Could the trees land on buildings, roads, vehicles or people. Probably yes. I would get a properly insured person to do it. And what are you going to do with the felled trees. That could be the biggest part of the work. They burn ok in closed wood burning stove but are no use for logs for an open fire as they spark all over the place. I would check around for estimates to get the job done properly but think you are talking much more than £350. Let's know how you get on. Good luck.

[Sunbeam]

It looks like we'd better start saving our pennies, doesn't it! I s'pose the alternative is to have them removed completely & either replace them with a 'nice' fence or plant a beech/laurel hedge... the unfortunate thing is we have another dozen or so in the back garden between us and our neighbour & one lonely one at the back of the garden between us and the field.. all of which are way bigger than they should be!

this is going to cost a fortune - it does make me mad that whoever planted them couldn't be bothered to keep them in check!!!

[Alice]

The sooner you deal with them the cheaper it will be. They get bigger every year. The price will depend on the space you have to fell them in to and the risk of damage if anything goes wrong. Get an expert and you won't have to worry - just pay. They can drop them exactly where they want them to go, or take them down in sections. At the end of the day you still have to get rid of all that timber. You can get a shredder or have it taken away in skips. Expensive business whichever way.

[poultrychat]

I thought there were some conifers that didn't grow back and if you cut a large amount off them then they died?

[Lesley Jay]

I thought so to. If you cut back passed the green part of the leaves I thought they didn't grow again.

[Jaxom]

If you want to kill off a tree with out cutting it down. [Main reason for this is stopping additional growth until it can be felled] is to cut the bark off the tree in a band 10 inches wide right round the tree. Make sure you remove all the outer layers down to the raw part of the tree.
The tree will slowly die back and start to dry out. When it comes to felling it later on, the job will be easier as there will be less foliage to deal with. The wood and small branches will also go through a shredder much quicker.
Jax

[andrewo]

You can't cut back beyond the green with conifers, they just don't regenerate like a privet. However, I believe you can lop off the tops and that will stop them reaching for the sky. I may be wrong but it's worth asking.

[Alice]

If the conifers are Leyland Cyprus, and at that height sounds like it, they do grow back when you chop them. They just put up a new leader.

[Birdie Wife]

If you want to kill off a tree with out cutting it down. [Main reason for this is stopping additional growth until it can be felled] is to cut the bark off the tree in a band 10 inches wide right round the tree. Make sure you remove all the outer layers down to the raw part of the tree.
Jax

Be sure only to ringbark trees that you don't want to be felling afterwards. If a tree surgeon has to go climbing dead trees to fell them in sections, he/she is not going to be happy and it might cost you twice as much. If you want to have standing dead conifers, be aware that they ain't gonna look pretty !

Conifer needles are acidic and I'm not surprised there's nothing growing under them together with the shade from the trees themselves. Scrape up as much as you can, replace with compost and lime it well.

[nick the grief]

....Conifer needles are acidic and I'm not surprised there's nothing growing under them together with the shade from the trees themselves. Scrape up as much as you can, replace with compost and lime it well.

Or grow blueberries.

You can cut some conifers back & they'll regrow, it depens on what sort you're are. Leylandii you can't but Yew can be cut back. There are a couple more but I can't remember which one's (I've got some Lawson's Cypress & they don't - I hope !).

If you don't mind a bit of a wait. You could get them cut down & the drill the stumps & fill with a stump root killer. It's basically like a compost accellerator only industrial strength, & it rots it away. The residue should then turn into compost & you can fork the ground over.

If you really want a hedge there I would still get shot of the cnifers & replant with either mixed hedging or Yew. The former is good for wildlife & the latter will be easier to maintain & it grown about a foot a year do it's not a low as most people think.

[Peter]

What are they?

You really need to establish what these tree's are.

If they are a cupressus tyepe (like Leylandi) then they will not grow back from any brown areas, but a green branch will take over as the new leading shoot. So if you trim the diameter too far then you'll end up with brown sticks holding up a green top.
If they are pine type, then the topmost branch will take over as the new leader. Can look very odd though, picture a Norway Spruce (Christmas Tree) with a big zig or zag twenty foot up. My mother has a Larch with this problem, she views it as characterful cos it's way away from her house.

Cutting will deform the outline anyway, most tree surgery on deciduous trees leaves you with bare arms sprouting alot of fingers at the end and a tendancy to allow ingress of rots etc, on pines you just get a deformed tree.

I would advise removal and putting in controlable hedge/windbreak plants of your own choosing. To that end ensure you get quotes to grind out the stumps as well as cut them down.

[shine388]

we had about 7 conifers in our front garden that were almost as tall as the house so we chopped them down to about 1.5 feet high years ago and just left the stumps in the ground (they never grew again after this) which we got out the other day

[Sunbeam]

these are definitely the type that don't grow back when you have cut past the green - there is a huge gap at approx head height where the previous owners had a shed & cut away the branches to accommodate & nothing has grown in there.

We are surrounded by fields on three sides of the house & the wind absolutely howls across the gardens, therefore we need some sort of windbreak - I don't really want a fence, but I might end up choppping them down & replacing with fence + new hedging...