"It's no good to me when you write about the virtues of oak or beech or Douglas fir or whatever. I live in the suburbs. I need a tree (or maybe more than one) which won't take too much light from me and which won't annoy the neighbours by doing the same to them." Well, he could try the birches. They are all lovely, graceful and easy to grow in almost any soil. You see them on the pavements of cities. For his purpose there are several versions of a slim outline, summer and winter. "The birch, most shy and ladylike of trees," wrote James Russell Lowell. And none fits this better than Tristis, "narrowly soaring and weeping," wrote Hugh Johnson in his International Book of Trees.
The particular tree in mind is now about thirty six feet high and the lacy, ladylike branches on either side do not project more than four feet in each case. Out goes the slim branch and down fall the lacy twigs. There is also betula pendula Youngii or Young's birch, which also comes in a fastigiate variety, upright and slim. The garden centre will put you right.
Birches have the great advantage of being able to survive, and more, in bogs and half-bogs, and it is said that in Scotland they almost outnumber conifers in bare rocky soil. Contrary to some opinions, birch logs burn well, if left to season for a year or two. Their chief practical uses otherwise appear to be in making broomsticks, in forming jumps for racehorses and, of course (surely this is dying out) as a punitive instrument.
Drink comes into the picture, too, in the form of birch sap wine. The gathering is the tricky bit, if you're daft enough to want to try it. You find a mature tree, in the first two weeks of March, bore a hole the width of whatever tube you are using to steal its sap, slanting upwards about 18 inches from the ground and insert a piece of plastic tubing to lead down into a collecting jar or bottle. Cork up the hole in the tree firmly after bleeding it, so that it doesn't die. Roger Phillips in his book Wild Food (Macmillan) tells you how to make the wine. But don't know anyone who ever tried it.
Some writers say the life of a birch may be no more than 80 years, though birch of up to a century and a half have been known. See you out anyway.