How To Keep Hackberry Trees From Destroying Your Fence

I am NOT a fan of using chemicals in my yard! However, after we spent an inordinate amount of money replacing a fence that had been decimated by hackberry trees, I needed something that I could use to protect my property even if my neighbors neglect their side of the fence line. Here’s how to keep hackberries from destroying your fence!

What are Hackberries?

There are a couple of different trees named hackberries. In the northern states the native Celtis occidentalis is used as a landscaping tree. They grow well in a variety of soil conditions and are drought tolerant.

They do lose their leaves in the fall, but the berries stay on the tree during winter until the birds eat them. They’re also freeze hardy and good for pollinators such as butterflies.

In southern states we have a very similar tree, the Celtis laevigata. They can grow up to sixty feet tall and sixty feed wide. So, if you intend to keep them for shade and wildlife, make sure you give it enough space!

I had no idea what hackberries were until we moved to San Antonio. Now I can spot them easily. You’ll usually see them growing through chain link and pushing down wooden fences.

Birds tend to eat the berries and when they sit on fences new seedlings start growing. If you neglect them too long their fast growth will quickly do damage, so it’s important to keep up with regular maintenance in your yard.

Controlling Hackberry Trees On Your Property

We had over twenty hackberry trees growing right on our fence line when we bought our current house. Previous property owners on all sides had neglected to trim small seedlings and they had grown to the point they were pushing down the fence and completely straddling the property line. Some of these poor trees had chain link fencing INSIDE of their trunks from growing through it for so long.

We also had a handsome hackberry tree well away from the property line that was a good source of shade in the back half of our yard, but it also had been mistreated. Its low branching trunk that should have been trimmed years before. Sadly, various ropes and things tied on to branches in the past had been left for so long they were becoming part of the tree.

Unfortunately, this tree did not survive and we lost it last summer. I was very disappointed! That half of our yard desperately needs shade now. Unfortunately it will take many years to grow a new tree to the same stature.

Mow and Weed Whack!

As much as I appreciated that tree, its little friends that are too close to the fence absolutely may not stick around. Regular mowing will easily control hackberry seedlings that are growing in your main yard. Keeping fences weed whacked controls those that are growing right up against the fence.

However, if your neighbors are like mine, and neglect to do either of these things, sometimes you have to get a little more aggressive. After we took out the multiple trees on top of our property line, those roots systems were determined to send up new shoots to survive. Unfortunately all of them were too close to allow to grow.

Use Brush Killer If You Have To

Instead of mowing our side down, we treated all these new starts with a brush killer so that it would be taken into the root system and also kill the saplings on the OTHER side of our fence. If you’re taking down a full tree you can also paint it onto the trunk after chopping to kill the entire root system.

You can’t use any brush killer. It has to be one that works on trees. We went with BioAdvanced and have retreated a few times a year for the past two years. We ONLY use this on the hackberry saplings, nowhere else in our yard. And if our neighbors were more cooperative, we wouldn’t need to use it at all now.

Should You Grow Hackberry Trees?

If you have hackberry trees on your property, that can be a very good thing! However, make sure they have enough space to grow to their full size. If they are too close to buildings or fences, you may need to remove them before they start causing problems.

Regular yard maintenance will go a long way to preventing any future problems, and it also means you don’t nee to use chemical means to protect your fences. However, if you’re dealing with an already established problem, you may need to be more aggressive in order to protect fencing and property.

Sources:
https://extension.umn.edu/trees-and-shrubs/common-hackberry
https://www.gardenstylesanantonio.com/plants/hackberry/
https://research.fs.usda.gov/silvics/hackberry
https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/celtis-occidentalis/