It is amazing how many expensive, new houses do not bother with having gutters that run into lines of drainage pipe to carry the water away from the house or even collect rainwater. The water is merely allowed to pour onto a stone or concrete slab to take its choice of drowning out the evergreens, shrubs and roses, or seeping down into the basement if there is one. In the average season there may be no difficulty, but in a wet season these home owners are guaranteed to have trouble and possibly loss of their landscape plantings.
A great many shade trees have had their trunks damaged through care-less handling, sun scald or borers, or by lawn mower and weed-eater damage. In some cases this damage has been so great that the top has died, been cut off and a sucker has come up from the roots or near the ground.
Weedeater Lawn Mower
There is always a question as to whether it is better to take these trees out and put in new ones or take a chance that they will heal over and grow satisfactorily. When the damage is slight enough that it can heal over in one growing season, it usually pays to leave the tree. When it will take two or more seasons to heal over, there is a chance that the wood may start to decay even though it has been painted with a tree paint.
These trees are the ones that we see snapping off in a wind storm a year or possibly ten years later. Where a sucker has come from the side of a trunk there is usually a stub that cannot possibly heal over. The result is that decay enters, creating a weak spot that shows up when the first little twister comes through. Too many badly damaged trees are nursed along because they are still alive. Check your small trees and plan to replace them next fall if they are in poor condition. I suggest that if you want to grow tress try to choose from the many types of ficus trees.
Vines on tree trunks are not only harmless to the tree but add charm to the average garden. Unless the vine is so vigorous that its foliage covers the leaves of the tree itself, there is no possible way in which damage can be done. Vines that cling to the bark, such as English ivy, wintercreeper, trumpet vine, and woodbine, obtain no nourishment from the tree itself. Their rootlike holdfasts merely cling to the dead outer cells of bark. Early this fall why not plant some evergreen vines at the base of your larger shade trees? Those in the southern range of the region might try the evergreen form of the trumpe tvine, called the cross vine. It isn't often found in nurseries but you will see it growing along the roadsides in Kentucky or Tennessee. Cuttings will root in vermiculite easily.