I know Hetty. I do have a concern though. Unlike down there, where slabs are flat on flat ground, up here it's a different story. We have real hills. The house is on a slope & the slab is what I, coming from down there, would term a modified stem wall footer. They call them stem slabs up here. The front is close to 5' high & the rear is level with ground. So they build a stem wall, dump dirt in it & compact it, then pour the slab over the whole. We have both sand & clay here. I have heard of foundation problems where the house starts sliding off a slope. I have a friend in Alabama who has had to have piers poured twice. The last time, they had to go right through her flooring inside & add some piers. It's expensive not to mention replacing the flooring & a messy job to have the piers poured inside the house.
There doesn't appear to be any problem like that here now & the house was built by one of the best builders in the area BUT...... you just never know. My concern is those roots have made their way under the foundation in the last 13 years the house has been here. I worry about disturbing things & making a problem. You know how roots can grow in even the hardest soil & when you remove something & the roots under the foundation decompose then they leave a void so to speak. That might allow the soil to shift. I don't really know. I just know that Murphy's Law lives in our attic & if we go messing around with what *is* then we might be setting ourselves up for a bigger problem than trimming hedges.
At any rate, they aren't going to be removed this year. We have so much on our to-do list that come first. When we get that stuff done, maybe I will get the builder out here & ask him what he thinks & even get some other professional opinions too.
I dislike hedges in the first place. Too structured for me. I like a much more casual & soft look. I would like native ornamental grasses, a bush or two, some small standard trees, & perennials, using as much native vegetation & xeri as possible. I also don't like that many of the hedges are invasive. Dwarf yaupon holly & nandina. They pop up everywhere in the plantings around the house & if you don't catch them small, they are a bear to pull out. The yaupon seems to crawl underground or if a stem gets covered with soil or mulch, it roots!
