Reply To: Can you plant trees in geothermal well fields?

[Thomas J. Johnson]

Here’s another idea Tanya… I don’t know if your project is commercial or residential. If it’s commercial, instead of pushing the limits of how close / deep you can get a tree to the lateral lines, why not emphasis their existence? You could plant small trees / large shrubs in the setback area and then plant a line of low shrubs/ground cover (something showy and distinctive) over the lateral geothermal lines. Maybe you could have a simple stepper path that runs parallel to the lines and design a small placard that says something to the effect of “This building is heated and cooled with geothermal wells that reduce energy consumption by 40%. You are standing over them right now.”

Then again, flowering crabapples would be lovely… One thought though: Do geothermal wells significantly effect the ground temperature enough to alter the cycles of flowering trees? Would a flowering crab think it’s June in February because it’s roots are warm? Would it attempt to flower but die because the weather isn’t what it thinks it is? I don’t know the answer myself but you see plants effected by micro-climates all the time. For example, this fall, I noticed the Euonymous in my Moms exposed front yard hard already dropped it’s leafs while the one closest to her house (warmer, protected) was just beginning to reach peak color. I wonder how warm soils would effect things…