I've got a large plumeria tree at the side of my house that I'd like to get rid of. It's a constant shedder so it makes a mess all year around and I'm getting fed up cleaning up after it. It's also in the middle of a small lawn and the foliage is now so dense that the grass no longer gets enough light or rain and my little lawn is now mostly just a patch of earth. Ideally I'd like to replace it with a fan palm.

The problem is that there's no easy access for a mechanical digger to get at it as the sala is in the way (just behind me in the photo). I suppose that could be dismantled temporarily but given all the plants growing on and around it that would make a lot of mess and it would take a long time to recover properly. So ideally I'd like to get the plumeria removed manually, but my experience of getting rid of trees in the past has been that the Thais are not interested in trying to get the roots out by hand.

So my question is how far down do a plumeria's roots go? I see roots fanning out several metres just under or even on the surface of the grass (or mud, depending on where you are) but do they go down a similar depth or is it one of those trees that doesn't have a deep root system? Any thoughts on whether it would be fairly easy to dig out manually?

Thanks for any help.

Don't know about plumeria but I have cut down several trees that grow like weeds. Like, I cut to a stump and then the stump blooms out. I just keep whacking and eventually the damn thing dies. I really doubt you can do anything about the roots except wait for them to be part of the soil after you kill the tree.

Contact this website: http://www.thefrangipaniman.com/

The guy running it is a strange one, but his knowledge about the plant is unbeatable. Only talk with him about the plant, every other subject is not advisable.

Arjen.

Thanks, I've sent him an e-mail.

Don't know about plumeria but I have cut down several trees that grow like weeds. Like, I cut to a stump and then the stump blooms out. I just keep whacking and eventually the damn thing dies. I really doubt you can do anything about the roots except wait for them to be part of the soil after you kill the tree.

I've had quite a few trees cut down in my garden and the Thai workers never remove the roots, even when I try insisting on it. The best result I've had was one tree that they cut right down to ground level and it never grew back. After cutting down some trees around the fish pond they simply concreted over the stumps and then tiled over it and that worked fine. In this case though I really want to get the whole thing taken out as I'd like to plant a fan palm there.