Tree choosing advice, please

I think its about 5 to 6ft, quite bushy. If I remember I will take a pic tomorrow.

This is the sweet gum/liquidamber I mentioned. It was planted as a whip in about February 2020 and promptly lost its top/leader. There is a main stem in there and I am hoping it will send up a new leader in due course.

A lot of the now mature trees in the garden were topped I think when they were young as most of the trees have a low division in the trunk. The problem is that they are now weak at that point, one very large sweet chestnut on top of a bank very close to the house has a divided trunk and now has a hole developing for rot to form in the v of the trunk. I must get round to filling it with mastic or something as water runs into it. I think I have seen expanding foam recommended, any suggestions would be welcome. The tree is showing no signs of splitting so far. Would a wood glue and sawdust mix work?

As an ex tree surgeon I can tell you doing anything is a waste of time (cosmetic at best) and often makes the problem worse in the long term.

Meanwhile an object lesson in not paying enough attention to what you are planting. The tree in the pic below was planted as a bare root 4-5ft sapling in spring 2020. The wall in the pic is 5ft high, I propped a 14ft + pole into the tree to demonstrate how much it has grown in two seasons. Its a Robinia pseudoacacia - Black Locust.

I had one in a previous garden and it only grew to a large shrub size, about 2 or 3 m tall. Anyway this one evidently likes the situation and is already at 4m high and wide after 2 seasons, it can get to 40ft / 12m, and about 9m across, Sadly far too big for that situation, much too close to the wall and to the house next door, I have already taken off two large branches that were heading over the wall. Also it is toxic, all parts of the tree are poisonous and it has vicious thorns which are also toxic. So it will have to be cut down. It was hardly a big investment at €7 but it has lovely flowers and attractive leaves, it will have to be removed now before it gets too big to manage.

That's interesting, the one I grew in the previous garden that didn't get big was grown from seed.

Great trees to plant on reclaimed land, root system holds the ground together and any vandalism normally results in new trees suckering up from the old roots + good timber and looks nice.

That made me laugh!

I get what you are saying 😀, but in fact it is a very handsome tree with racemes of creamy white flowers in spring, good foliage and good autumn colour. Really the only problem was me putting it in the wrong place. There are lots of toxic plants in gardens and we manage to survive them, but hanging over a wall into a garden where there are young children playing is not a desirable situation, quite apart from the potential size. If I had planted it elsewhere in the garden I would have left it.

I made a mistake when planting a magnolia tree.

It is only small but I planted a weigela about a metre away from it and a climbing rose about half a metre away.

I realise now those are too close for comfort and the recommendation is to give them lots of space.

Any thoughts? Will I get away with it if I keep the rose pruned away from the tree?

You sometimes have to accept the lose of one plant as another grows.

I always suggest planting specimen plants that you will keep like you magnolia at good spacing so they will hardly if at all interfere with each other. Then you can infill with cheaper possibly faster growing plants that are "expendable".

Amalancier wil be good choice and may be easy to control at least initially.you may be able to get a semi mature amalancier at this time of the year in curragh or in tullys at a decent price.

An orange variety which you are after may be dogwood or cornus alba .

Another option would be rhus typhina which are stunning multistema with orange leaves in autumn but it's a suckering tree so may be difficult to control depending on the space in the front .