Planting around a silver birch tree

Mother Hen2

I have a shady area of the garden which has a silver birch in the middle of it. I want to plant it up with a mixture of shrubs, perennials and bulbs etc but how do I go about this with the prolific shallow silver birch roots? They are dense and right on the surface of the soil up to 80cm away from the tree. 

Any ideas on what I should do? Just work around the roots, limiting myself to planting seedlings and bulbs or is there another route I could explore? 

Logan

With trees your problem is water the tree will take a lot, if you did plant under you will have to water them every day. The only thing you can try is a raised bed but it might kill the tree and it will have to be very deep.

nutcutlet

Don't do it now. Waiit til the autumn rains and plant small so you don't need to disturb much. All will settle by spring.