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Would you remove this holly?
There is a holly tree in my front yard (to the right of the window when facing the house). I have a love/hate relationship with this tree. Love: the evergreen leaves and red berries look good with our red/green house IMO. The birds love the berries and it's easy to watch them from the front window. Also, I like having something to soften up that front corner of the house. It provides great decorating material for my mantel at Christmas. Hate: the prickley leaves! I hate that I can't weed anywhere near this tree without ripping my hands to shreds. Also, it does block our view a bit from the front window.
I had an arborist out to look at it this week, secretly hoping he would tell me it was diseased, too close to the house, etc., so that the decision would be easy. Alas, it's in perfect shape and is purely "personal preference" and the Japanese maple might be slightly better off if it was gone. Both came with the house, but I think the maple was a dumb idea, since it will eventually block the window. WWYD? And if it makes a difference, my 84 year old grandmother says it is veeerrrrryyy bad luck to kill a holly tree.
Re: Would you remove this holly?
If I couldn't weed around it I'd get rid of it. It doesn't look bad but it sounds like your preference is to not have it and that's all that matters.
How fast do japanese maples grow in your area? If it's going to grow in front of the window anytime soon I'd move it to the location the holly is right now and find a new shrub for under the window...like say a dwarf conifer (I love them though so I'm biased). Otherwise you could leave the jap maple and put a pendula, columnar, or globular on a standard dwarf conifer where the holly is.
Of course I love your house. So nice to see an exterior pic of it after seeing so many interior ones! What is that big thing in front of the holly? Seems to be taking over the bed at least visually.
Thanks for the advice (and the compliment!). That's a native California shrub called a ceanothus (California lilac). It has beautiful purple/blue blooms in Feb./March when there isn't much else going on. Requires zero supplemental water; actually it tends to rot and die if watered. Also, the native and honey bees swarm to it, so I'm not willing to give it up. I do have to prune pretty aggressively though. I think the sellers were just trying to fill up the yard before they sold, not really considering the long-term consequences of their choices.
The hardest part I'm having with getting rid of it is that the birds just love it, and I'm a sucker for animals. I'm not sure what I could put there that would pay off reasonably quickly and that they would love as much. Maybe they just love that it's a tree and not the berries? But they seem to go to that one more than the others.
ETA: How's the stained glass going?
ETA2: There is a butterfly bush between the ceanothus and the holly. That's what's getting taller. This was taken in the spring, so it's huge now. I do need to get rid of that and know I have to do it, but my heart is as soft for plants as it is for animals
I'm hoping someone in my garden club or on freecycle needs a butterfly bush this fall.
Ah that's why I didn't recognize it. Yes some serious pruning will help keep it under control. It looks very happy there. : )
Well if you want to keep the holly I guess I'd plant some dense groundcover below it so I didn't have to weed underneath. Conifers have cones birds like to eat but many dwarf varieities are either infertile or take a long time to develop them. The one nice thing a conifer does is provide shelter if they want to build a nest there. I'm betting it's the berries they like though.
I wish I could grow butterfly bushes! I'll just have to stick with my lilac bushes for now. I'm sure you can find someone in your garden club or on CL/Freecycle who will take it for you.
My stained glass class is going good. The last class is tonight so we'll see if (a) I can get it all done because I'm behind and (b) how my soldering skills are. We're using the copper foil method and I still don't have all of my pieces ground down so I have a lot more work to do! But like you I just want to get it finished so I can move on to the real panels I want to make! I found out that my MIL actually has a lot of the stained glass tools that I can borrow! She just retired this year but was an art teacher so she had to take summer continuous education art courses some of which were stained glass. She even has a Mortonson board which makes cutting straight lines and angles easy. It will be perfect for the prairie designs I want to do.
That's great! That will save you some money. I need to sit down and write all the steps out while it's still somewhat in my brain. I'm afraid that by the time I get around to my cabinets, I'll have forgotten everything I learned.
I think I'm going to tell the arborist to leave the holly for now. I can always remove it later, but I can't put it back if I regret taking it out. But that maple will get harder and harder to move...
My compromise with DH (who hates the crowded front yard) will be getting rid of the butterfly bush, which is lovely. I thought those things would grow anywhere! I'm surprised you can't grow them. I had two of them that had to be moved, I stuck one in the back yard under a loquat tree because I didn't have anywhere else to put it and couldn't stand to throw it away. I hoped it would die back there honestly so I wouldn't have to make a decision. But it's now grown up through the 15-foot tall tree, and is blooming up above the loquat canopy! Sigh. I need to harden my heart a little.
So I didn't get it all done tonight like I had hoped. Luckily they are very flexible and will let me come back for another night free of charge to finish it. I'd love to start working on my next panel right away (partially so I don't forget everything like you mentioned) but they don't have any lead came classes until September and I really want to take the class because of the great work I've seen that was made by the instructor. He is a master of perfectly straight lines and symmetrical designs. We learned the copper foil method in class so lead came will be new.
Wow I didn't realize butterfly bush grow that big. They can't handle our cold winters. They do well up to Zone 5 but we're a Zone 4. There is a big drop off in plant options between those two zones. More often than not I read about a new plant I'm excited to try only to find out it's only cold hardy to Zone 5.