Plants near waste pipes

Leif

I have some pipes across my garden, a soil pipe encased in concrete, and a storm drain pipe about 1m down. There are near boundaries. Are there any shrubs that would be safe to plant? Are there are trees that would be okay near the drain pipe, preferably fruit? I suspect trees are out, but you never know. I do wonder if the concrete round the soil pipe (required by regs due to close to surface) is sufficient protection and hence that dwarf apple trees and similar would be okay.

tim_n

Trees and shrubs are pretty effective filters - you can use rotted human waste on the base of them and the fruit is safe to eat (or so I've read in several books, I don't tend to do this myself...)

Don't plant root vegetables

Not sure if that's the danger you're talking about however - the trees roots could burrow into the pipes if there are any cracks and cause more problems.

You can get trees that happily grow in containers if the garden is sheltered enough but you'll be doing a lot of watering!

Hope that helps

Davesnave

I would think you'd be safe enough with step over apple trees and similar.

ATM I have a 18' oak growing within a couple of feet of my soil pipe, and while it's been fine there since the person who planted it had that daft idea, I'm not keen to let it see another summer.

Leif

My concern was a root penetrating a pipe and causing a leak. This is not so serious with the storm drain, but the sewage pipe could be problematic with raw sewage seeping into the garden soil. However, the concrete around the sewer pipe should provide protection. As for the other pipe, I am not sure how deep roots go. I know Willow can travel a very long way in search of water, and someone said cherry has invasive roots.

emiff6

Cherry is definitely a BAD idea! My neighbour across the road had a cherry about 2 metres from the house sewer drain. It grew huge, and so he had it pruned in Spring. Was that a mistake!!! By summer his drains were blocked - toilets backed up etc. At first the young kids were blamed, he thought they'd stuffed toys down the loo. Had the drains rodded, but within two weeks they were backed up again. The drain men put a camera down and the main pipe was literally solid with tree roots. Pruning the tree had given it an exuberant new lease of life!

He had the tree down and the stump ground out PDQ!

Leif

emiff6 wrote: »

Cherry is definitely a BAD idea!

It was not a dwarf root stock then! I know that in the wild cherry is HUGE, 100 feet tall at a guess. We had some locally and the fruit was tasty, but almost impossible to pick.

I'm wondering about apple and plum on dwarf root stock, and a quince further away.

Eenymeeny

We have a quince which is close knit, prickly and doesn't bear much fruit. Have just dosed it with glyphosate to kill the couch grass which was growing through it. It also catches any leaves or litter in the vicinity so personally, wouldn't recommend.

Leif

Eenymeeny wrote: »

We have a quince which is close knit, prickly and doesn't bear much fruit. Have just dosed it with glyphosate to kill the couch grass which was growing through it. It also catches any leaves or litter in the vicinity so personally, wouldn't recommend.

Sounds like you have a flowering quince with small fruit. I think the fruit are barely edible. I have one of those, and I might get rid of it. A quince tree is bigger. My late mother's bore loads of gigantic scented fruit. It was not prickly. And the fruit were nice cooked.

Davesnave

Leif wrote: »

Sounds like you have a flowering quince with small fruit. I think the fruit are barely edible. I have one of those, and I might get rid of it. A quince tree is bigger. My late mother's bore loads of gigantic scented fruit. It was not prickly. And the fruit were nice cooked.

They are indeed very good. Unfortunately, we have quince leaf spot in the area, so ours may have to go.

Although I have no shortage of space, I've a couple of septic tanks to disguise, as well as the associated pipework, so I'm looking for evergreen things that won't be too invasive root- wise. Conifers have fibrous roots that don't go down very far, so that's one idea, and there are plants like euonymous that can be kept small quite easily.

I'm not going to waste the box bushes there! :rotfl:

Eenymeeny

Thanks Leif, didn't realise that there were two types and yes, it does have nice flowers in the summer. Looks like it's surviving the glyphosate... maybe I'll give it another year

aliasojo

Leif wrote: »

My concern was a root penetrating a pipe and causing a leak. This is not so serious with the storm drain, but the sewage pipe could be problematic with raw sewage seeping into the garden soil. However, the concrete around the sewer pipe should provide protection. As for the other pipe, I am not sure how deep roots go. I know Willow can travel a very long way in search of water, and someone said cherry has invasive roots.

And you'd be right to be concerned imo. Roots can be very invasive and can get through the slightest crack in concrete.

Our drains are now collapsed, largely because of root damage.

It's a rented property so the owner is having to shell out big bucks to sort this out.

I'd only ever plant shallow rooting plants in the vicinity and even then I'd worry.