I have just bought my first house and I am redoing the flower beds. I have two questions:

I have five (twenty year old) crepe myrtles planted very close to my house--one is less than a foot away. I have cut them down because they were growing against the house, but I am not quite sure how to deal with the stumps. I was a little worried about their effect on my foundation being that they are so close--should I be? One tree has died the others are growing back. Is it okay to leave them or will they attract termites? I thought about letting the them grow back and keeping them small.

My second question is do I need to have a liner underneath my mulch in my flower beds. What are the advantages and disadvantages?

Thank you,

Tom

I had the same problem...

I dug out around the stump a few inches, cut the stump below the soil line and poured some blackstrap molasses on top, covered it with soil and the cypress mulch. Seems to have done the trick.

You do not need a liner under the mulch. You would most likely lose quite a bit of the benefit of the mulch breaking down and amending the soil in your flowerbed.

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"A righteous person who is wise resembles God: he never disciplines anyone in order to take vengeance upon a wrongdoing, but only so that the person may be set aright, or that others may be deterred."
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