When it’s time to have a tree taken out, sometimes the cost of grinding up the stump can be as expensive as cutting up the tree. One way to save money is to leave the tree stump where it is, and landscape around the darn thing.
There’s all sorts of things that can be done with an old tree stump. Here’s just a few ways that some of my neighbors and I have landscaped around the tree stumps in our yard.
Turn it into a platform for container gardening. When trees are taken out, they often leave a patch of sunlight where none had existed before. A tree stump is a great place to put a container garden. Herbs, strawberries, radishes, beets, and green onions can be placed in individual containers and arranged on an old tree stump. Potted annuals or a miniature water garden will also look nice in this location. To create a raised bed, using a child’s pool, old galvanized wash tub or a shallow 36″ round planter are a few “no-build” yet low cost solutions.
What’s great about using a stump as a platform for container gardening is that the tree crew will leave the stump at whatever height you’d like. For an elevated garden, have them leave the stump anywhere from 24-42 inches in height. Don’t like the look of the trunk? Plant English Ivy around the base for an evergreen covering.
Plant shrubs around it. Another easy method of landscaping around an existing tree trunk is just to camouflage it with plantings. While I wouldn’t recommend this for large stumps, this works well for stumps that are 12″ in diameter or less. What we did at our place to hide an old honeysuckle stump was to plant lilac and syringa bushes around the stump, along with tiger lilies and periwinkle. The decomposing stump provided nutrition for the plants, and created a nice shrubbery as a focal point in that part of the yard. Tall shrubs paired with an evergreen ground cover and flowers will hide that unsightly stump in less than a season.
Turn it into a potting bench. If a large tree had to be removed from your yard, have the tree cutters leave about 42″ of stump for an outdoors potting bench. My neighbor turned a diseased tree into a natural potting bench by having her husband cut a 60″ round sheet of plywood to nail to the top of the stump.
Hiding an old tree stump with landscape really isn’t that difficult to do. Whether you turn your stump into a piece of art work, a potting bench, or hide it behind landscaping, it’s worth remembering that the stump will eventually rot away at some point in the future. While this won’t happen right away, it bears keeping watch for the possibility of the stump breaking apart while someone is standing on top.
