I just bought a new house In Lindon, Utah this winter with a big treehouse nestled between three beautiful 60-year-old elms only to discover that the bolts they drilled into the trees killed them. They have to cut off everything above about 25 feet off the ground so the branches don't fall and kill someone---in fact, one large branch broke off a few days ago and could have crushed our fence, but got tangled in another branch.

In trying to come up with a way to deal with this heartache, I thought that perhaps we could plant strangler figs around the bases of the dead elms. I'd be thrilled if they scaled them and started producing a new canopy. I'm not so much concerned with the taste of the fruit as how quickly they grow.

Is it possible?