Been given a Malus Evereste Crab Apple.. Where cna I put it

So I received this as a gift, as I mentioned to a friend a number of years back I'd like one. Since then, my garden has filled a bit!

The only suitable place with respect to sunlight is in a border with shrubs and roses. There is a spot I can make which would be a few feet from the centre of any of these roses. Too close do you think? Or do I just need to improve the soil a lot to allow it to establish..

I guess it's a nice problem to have! Appreciate any thoughts!

Thanks in advance

 

The main concern would be not damaging the roses' roots and causing rootstock suckers. Once they start, there’d be no end to it!

 

Oh, do you mean damaging them from my digging to plant the tree? The roses are at most 1.5 years old...

 

Yes. In 1.5 years, if they're healthy, they will have put on quite impressive, deep roots. What's the soil like? If it's clay it will be virtually impossible to dig a hole for the tree without cutting surrounding roots. If sandy, you could shake the roots gently, minimising damage. Is the Malus rootbound in a pot? To get it established you'll need to spread it's roots out. Perhaps I'm just being an old whittle-britches and your roses aren't grafted onto rootstocks that sucker, but just something to be aware of :-)

 

Hi,

Roses are such tough plants that I think that even if you damaged some of the roots a little bit, assuming you would try to keep that as minimum as possible, they would bounce back.

My main concern would be competition and feeding, considering how hungry roses are.

I have a rose border myself that was getting quite congested - it includes two trees, one of them being a crabapple. Despite the best of my efforts, at least 1-2 of the roses were getting leaf discolouration. I have since relocated one of the roses and replaced some of the other plants with ones that have low feeding requirements e.g. lavender.

If you like the idea of the crabapple being there to add height, perhaps you could move one of the roses? It won't be happy and ideally that would have been done in Winter, but if done carefully, it should still bounce back. That also depends on how established the rose is, if it hasn't been in the ground for several years, it should be fine to move. At 1.5 years, I would have no concerns, as long as it is done carefully.

P.S. What a lovely gift, sounds like a good friend.