I started gardening around all three sides of my duplex two days after I moved into it. And those beds developed nicely during two growing seasons.
One garden bed, however, did a great job of frustrating me in that same period. It was the 10x13 foot raised bed under a semi-mature Silver Maple on the north side of my home. I had read several times, and heard from fellow gardeners several times, that gardening under a Silver Maple was effort doomed to failure. The highly aggressive root system grows close to the surface. It has a reputation for heaving sidewalks and foundations... and it robs other plants of moisture and nutrients.
I thought hard about all those facts for two growing seasons... and finally decided I had to make a serious effort to improve the looks of the area under this tree.
Several years later I'm very glad I did. The effort involved lots of soil amending, very careful appraisals of which plants might work, and keeping a careful eye on watering needs.
But I think the results really do speak for themselves. All of the plants in the photo have now been in the ground for at least three years.
