Trim Southern Magnolia?

[whitenack]

My wife (I'll blame it on her) wants to trim the bottom branches of our mature Southen Magnolia. Is this OK to do?

Currently, the lower branches droop down and rest on the ground, making it difficult to keep weeds out. Also, she wants to set up some hostas and plants underneath it to make it look nicer.

I have read on the internet that you really shouldn't trim a Magnolia. However, a local tree trimmer said that it was best to trim the lower branches that droop to the ground to keep them from rotting.

Any thoughts?

 

[Chud]

The branches that touch the ground will not rot, if anything they will take root. You can prune or remove the low branches.

 

[deercatcher]

Trimming low branches iin southern magnolia is not the best choice. The reasons: 1) they are litterers. They will drop leaves daily. You will spend half your time raking, the other half looking at leaves! 2) Dense shade makes it hard to get other plants to grow underneath, in all those leaves. 3) Many surface roots reduce the amount of available soil your other plants are trying to grow in the shade, and leaf litter.

If you can let them grow from the ground up, the litter can self mulch as a ground cover. The leaves that escape can be raked back under with less effort. The branch ends will layer; that is attach to the ground and send vertical trunks up. If you want a traditional cone shape, snip out those efforts. One of my favorite magnolias has a 20 inch center trunk, with a ring of layered trunks ten feet distant; making a fairy ring like room underneath. Grown from the ground, a child friendly 'green' room will form. From the inside looking out, one feels secure and protected, and one can look out easily. One of my clients is a very mature woman who reads and writes surrounded in massive magnolia limbs. From the outside looking in, you see beautiful green foliage.

If you don't have the space for low limbs, you may not have space for a magnolia. If you are in a crime area, you know who can use your 'green' room to hide. If the low limbs obscure traffic; you have a liability issue.

If you are in a relatively young tree neighborhood, with lots of ambient light (not many neighboring shading trees) and you don't mind raking, and bare ground, by all means trim up the limbs, so it looks like every other kind of tree!