Bye Bye, Annoying Trees (Part 1)

Here's what the corner of our yard looks like now.

The jungle corner. You can see the fence damage in the red square, and the tangle of camphors in the blue.

The palm is incredibly out of place and it's grown so much since we moved in 12 years ago that it's now pressing up against the fence. This means that we have to constantly repair the fence and hack off branches of the palm tree.

Over on the left is a group of camphor trees. When we moved in, I think we only had two or three "trunks" but now there's a good four or five of them. They're pushing up the cement patio, ruining the other fence, shading our lawn/garden, and annoying the heck out of our favorite neighbors. Oh, and did I mention that the camphors also sprout berries that fall all over and cause a giant mess?

Our view when we step out to the patio

That's not to say that it's all bad. We love having the shade on the patio.

But out they must go.

One plan was to remove all of the trees and even bring in a stump grinder to remove as much as possible. This was a lot more expensive and also removed the habitat (the tree houses squirrels (boo) and birds). I liked this plan, as we were going to replace the trees with a trio of small birches.

But we had several arborists out and the one we liked the most suggested we leave one of the camphors and then wait and see if we're able to live with it. If not, we can always have it removed. Otherwise we'll have the shade and the birds keep some of their tree.

Yep, right up and over the power/etc. lines...

This is suboptimal for me, and our neighbors (well, most of the trees will be gone, so it's an improvement either way). Plus, the tree is so tall it's grown right over the power (phone? cable?) lines. I think this is a disaster waiting to happen. But I've told myself I'm going to keep an open mind and try the less severe approach recommended by the arborist first.