We used to have roses that grew on both sides of our sidewalk that lead to the front of our house, but, two of the biggest rose bushes with the giant flowers had elm trees that keep coming up in the middle and amongst the stems of the flowers. Even tho I removed and pulled all that I could see (and had lots of battle scars and broken thorn tips in the back of my hands through my gloves, the trees continued to grown and became more entangled with my roses to the point that even if I dug up the whole bushes and started off new (these same roses my great grandmother had planted 35 years earlier, same ones) the trees would still come up where the roses where. Well, the lil ol lady of the neighborhood told me, if I want to stop the trees without harming the roses this is what i do....(this works best when fall is nearing as this is when plants start to return nutrients back down their stems to the roots and/or bulbs to return the following year. You cut the branches of tree all off and dig a little bit under soil so part or rootball/roots and exposed, you want to cut the tree back say 1 or 2 inches below soil and on the "scar" of what you just cut off, you tear a piece of duct tape and wrap around root around it so it makes like a cone shape that is closed at the bottom tight so it wont leak. The pour some salt, sidewalk salt (not chemical deicer,, salt, table salt will work but is fine and might get through tape killing roses as well. (I find ice cream salt works well, even though expensiver, you're only going to use small amount. Using enought salt in this "cone" that the stem within cone is covered with salt, begin to wrap and tighten duct tape over and around stem and closing so that salt remains on stem , add more duct tape over it if you need to. don't want salt to leak into soil to kill rose. Then you cover back up with soil, maybe even slightly deeper. The following year, the rose comes up, and ONLY the rose. (The salt was sucked into the tree rootts killing the roots permanently not harming your roses. This souonds hoe ky but, i acutally did it and it actually worked on every rose i did it too.. Works on trees growing in fence line that even are 3-4 inches across stem size. I don't have to prove any of these or tell you where to find info.....these are things that i have actually done for myself and worked to used on fendeline trees. Duct tape protected everything else, soil grass etc. WAH LAA!.. Now whether duct tape still exists in ground i don't know, never checked for left over tape later. Hope this helps another one like me who was at wits end with ideas that never worked or back fired....these all worked for me everytime I did them.

I have an old Rose of Sharon tree next to my driveway. It is about 10 - 12 foot tall. In the spring, I prunes back the low hanging branches so I could mow around it. Now, the several trunks are sagging towards the outside leaving a hole in the middle. The branches are now only 3 - 4 foot from the ground. Should I severly prune the branches back to relieve the weight or try corral all the branches with a nylon rope and try pulling them up in a circle hoping they will grow straight again?