20 Trees You’d Better Not To Grow In Your Yard

We all would like to have a beautiful yard with various trimmed plants. The little garden should provide you with a picturesque view and fresh air. But planting a tree is not always as pleasant as you suppose, and you will be hugely disappointed by having these trees in your yard.

1. Sweetgum

Its name may trick you into thinking that the tree would bring you sweet time, but in fact, it wouldn’t. Sweetgum has giant surface roots. Its root system will eventually damage your house’s foundation, lawn, pool, and other nearby structures. Plus, its fruits that fall to the ground are hard to clean up.

2. Linden

Its beautiful appearance can’t offset the mess it will make. It is attractive to aphids, and it will secret the sap, which will stick to anything, including your car and driveway. Housewives can call it a nightmare.

3. Mulberry Tree

You may wish to harvest many mulberries before planting the tree. Unfortunately, before that, you will worry about vast amounts of its pollen, which will attract insects and pests.

4. White Pine

If you plant a white pine in your yard, be prepared to pay great efforts to take care of it. This tree is quite vulnerable to the cold climate. Besides, it attracts pests such as bagworms and sapsuckers.

5. Cottonwood Tree

Many people favor cotton trees because they look nice, and the maintenance is affordable. But their roots are too soft and shallow to resist bad weather, thus posing a potential threat to your roof, car, and garage.

6. Ginkgo Biloba

Ginkgo Biloba has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years and is known for its therapeutic properties. However, they’re not suitable to be planted in the yard because they will grow to as much as 80 feet in height and their fruit is hard to deal with when it drops on the ground.

7. Russian Olive

Don’t be cheated by the Russian Olive’s distinctive look. Although it looks nice, it doesn’t fit a typical yard because it crowds out other plants, stealing all their water and nutrients.

8. Leyland Cypress

The fast-growing evergreen Leyland Cypress is favored for its ability to provide you a living privacy screen quickly. The problem is that it needs frequent trimming to ensure the branches don’t get out of control. Another disadvantage of this tree is that it can often be uprooted during periods of severe wind or stormy weather, making it quite dangerous to grow around houses.

9. Mimosa Tree

Like the Cottonwood tree, Mimosa trees are frail with weak wood, which makes them highly unpredictable during storms. Besides, they are well known for producing large seeds, which means a massive forest of mimosa trees can appear in your yard in a short time.

10. Empress Tree

The Empress Tree is a plant native to China and stands out with its fragrant flowers, but it is weak and unpredictable in a storm. Think twice before choosing it.

11. Bradford Pear

The Bradford pear was imported to the U.S. from China in the early 1900s as a replacement for traditional orchard trees that were dying. Since then it became a local favorite with its compact shape and low maintenance needs. That was until folks found that it was highly prone to splitting and cracking when it reached maturity and the flowering blooms had quite an unpleasant smell.

12. Quaking Aspen

Quaking Aspen is often found in northern climes and is favored for its vibrating leaves and white bark. However, the problem is that they have a weak root system and fast propagation. You might be scared when you find a forest starting to overtake your home. Be careful about this kind of tree in your backyard.

13. Silver Maple

Silver maple is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and majestic of trees, but it is notorious for cracking driveways and walkways and for its brittle wood invading sewage pipes and draining fields. Besides, it will grow too large. The largest Silver Maple in the USA measures more than 110 feet tall and over 340 inches in circumference. Do you really want one of these around your house?

14. Ash

Sturdy and robust, many professional baseball bats are made from its wood, but it becomes vulnerable due to the emerald ash borer, a tiny beetle that can easily destroy the tree. If you’re looking for a long-term tree for your yard, look elsewhere.

15. Lombardy Poplar

The Lombardy Poplar was once a popular landscaping tree for its speedy growth (up to 6 feet a year) and columnar shape. The problem is that they’re prone to many diseases and bugs, which can render them ugly, and their running roots are invasive and difficult to eradicate.

16. Willow

Also known as the Golden Weeping Willow, this tree stands out with its slender branches. Beautiful on the outside, it has an aggressive, water-hungry root system that terrorizes drain fields, sewer lines, and irrigation pipes. The worse thing though is that the tree is relatively short-lived, lasting only about 30 years.

17. Eucalyptus

Eucalyptus was imported from Australia and became popular due to their speedy growth, and the strong scent. However, it has a bad rap for suddenly and unexpectedly dropping big, heavy, resin-filled branches and also needs lots of maintenance due to the annual fall of its showy bark.

18. Mountain Cedar

Mountain cedar shouldn’t be in your list of yard plan because this bushy tree will release massive amounts of pollen during the colder months, causing severe allergic reactions in many people.

19. Black Walnut

The Black Walnut is not recommended to plant in your yard because it will produce pollen and dangerous toxins that could kill any other vegetable, flower or landscaping plant nearby. What’s more, their fruits are very difficult to clean once they drop on the ground.

20. Chinese Tallow

Chinese Tallow stands out with its broad leaves that to turn bright colors during the autumn. But given the fact it can reach up to 30 feet in width and 40 feet in height, you’d better not consider planting it in your backyard. Just think about how massive the roots it will be in a couple of decades.

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