I Did NOT Want To Kill You

I bought you in spring of 2009, when you were a two-feet youngling, and planted you in my front yard to replace an old oak that had to be taken down due to a disease. My mother helped me pick you out because she was fascinated with magnolias she’d seen everywhere on LSU campus. I dedicated you to my 7-year-old son as I thought it would be fun to watch you grow together.

You grew indeed. So fast, strong, and beautiful. I had to enlarge the mulch circle around you every year as your canopy created shade killing the grass around you and I didn’t like the bold spots. I didn’t mind, it was fascinating to watch you grow and bloom in May-June with those enormous, beautiful flowers that seemed to smell for miles. I would cut some of them and put them in different rooms around the house, and everyone noticed the pleasant smell permeating my home. Years later, my son learned how to make “perfume” out of your petals, so we could spray and smell your essence longer, not just in the blooming season.

At the time I planted you, you were only the second magnolia tree in our entire subdivision of 170 houses. The first one had been planted in 1999, as the owner told me, and every year it served to me as a yardstick of how tall and thick you could grow. That tree now is the tallest in our subdivision, no one can lock a hug around it anymore and it is still growing. So, I knew you’d grow big as well, and warned my neighbors about it. While you were a baby, they didn’t mind, but their concern grew every year as you grew. We had a great relationship, and my neighbor who manicured his lawn every week, carefully asked me many times if I would please take you down. I resisted, he reluctantly tolerated you.

I loved you so much that around 2012 I planted a dwarf sister for you near my driveway so that you don’t feel alone. I knew I couldn’t plant another giant magnolia because you’d start suffocating each other, but the dwarf variety would do, I thought. I hope you still enjoy her company. She is not so dwarf anymore, but pretty much stopped growing at this point.

Around 2015, I had to cut your lower branches as my neighbor didn’t like mowing his part of the lawn while bending under you. But you still were growing strong, shaping your cone up, so I had to continue to enlarge your mulch circle.

You grew even faster during the pandemic years, like many things in the nature taking a break from mad humans in lockdown. In late 2021, you reached the height of my house. My neighbor grew even more concerned. We had to trim some of your brunches on their side as you were killing the grass and brush there.

The same year, I discovered that your juices are lethal for pretty much every other plant but yourself. I’d added your leaves to the compost that killed most of my vegetable garden. It took me awhile to figure out why my peppers and tomatoes did not grow from the compost I spent so much time mixing, stirring, and enriching. Or if they grew, they were all crooked and twisted, and had only a few flowers yielding next to nothing. Lesson for life: Can’t put magnolia leaves into a compost, as I’ve learned from gardening and composting websites, a little too late for that gardening season.

Last year in the summer, you reached the height of my house. You also caused such a big bold spot in the grass on my neighbors’ property that I offered to create an “infinity ring” by combining the mulched area under their small tree and your once-again-enlarged circle. That’s when my neighbors of 14 years broke the news that they were selling their house and moving. You will be my next neighbor’s problem, they joked. My heart sank. But I had to go back to my job in another state and forgot about you as a "problem." Just remembered you warmly as a beautiful tree.

The new neighbor moved in September, after I left. I never had a chance to meet her in person, even when I visited for Thanksgiving and the December break. She is a traveling nurse, so our schedules are different.

And then in late January I received a letter in which the new neighbor stated that you were too large, created too much shade, killed her grass, and blocked her views. You also allegedly prevented the grass from growing in the back and even damaged the fence and gate to her backyard (which is not true, that is a persistent shared problem we’ve always had because of uneven ground level and washing rain water in the back of our front yards). She also threatened that if I don’t take care of “the magnolia problem,” she would file an official complaint with the HOA.

I called my landscaper who evaluated your growth and said it was too late to trim or prune you as it would ruin your cone structure and kill you. If moderate trimming were attempted, it would cost more than taking you down and I’d have to do it almost every year as you’d continue to grow. Giant magnolias take decades to reach the full size (some can grow as tall as 80 feet) and can live up to 250 years, so you still had a way and height to go. The landscaper also confirmed that you’d probably kill more grass, create more shade, and block more views as your canopy expands.

I don’t want to have a war with my new neighbor. So tomorrow, you will be gone.

I really did not want to kill you but next time I visit, there will be a big empty hole on the lawn in your place that I will have to take care of, somehow. I am thinking about planting a Japanese maple there. Just because I love trees. I will probably plant it further away from my neighbor’s property line and keep it trimmed at a manageable height. Or I could just re-seed the grass.

But I will never have another giant magnolia. To honor your memory, I will cherish these pictures and keep this story. I cried my tears out, gave you a big hug and said my good-byes when I visited for the spring break a couple of weeks ago. If it is any consolation, your dwarf sister will stay.