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rewb801

Help! Having a hard time finding/deciding on a midsize shade tree

Rewb801
10 years ago

My location is Ogden, UT. Zone is 5b

Looking for a shade tree with big to medium sized leafs, single tree trunk, tough wood, and planning on keeping it pruned to a height no more than 20-25ft.

Below is a picture of the landscape where i'm planning on planting the tree, off to the left will be 4ft high 2ft wide boxwood shrub hedge. And to the right as you can see there's a underground gas line going through my yard which i'm hoping doesn't cause a problem with the roots from the tree as it matures.
Now I have two trees that i'm really interested in but have a few concerns about em. I'm also open to suggestions to other trees. preferably deciduous.

The first tree is a European Hornbeam (Fastigiata variety) I think this tree will look well in my yard and liking that its strong wood because it tends to get windy in my area and usually get one good wind storm a year. The main concern about this tree is the shallow root sytem, do you think it will cause any interference with the gas line?

The second tree is a American Yellow wood, I pretty much love everything about this tree and it having a tap root system I don't think it will cause any problems with the gas line but the two concerns I have about this tee is the crotches are said to be weak and will break during a wind storm, the other concern is that all the pictures that i've seen on google images seem to all have multi trunk stems, so my question is can this tree be pruned and cut to have a strong crotch system so branches wont break . And can you train it to grow straight up with one trunk.

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