How far from a wall should I plant a tree in the UAE?

Root damage to UAE hard landscaping is almost always a planting-distance mistake made years earlier, and it is expensive to fix. The aggressive rooters here are the flame tree, ficus (all forms), neem and conocarpus — all of them run shallow, wide surface roots that lift slabs.

The better-behaved flowering trees are tabebuia, bauhinia and frangipani, which is why municipalities use tabebuia along paved boulevards. If the tree has to sit close to hard landscaping, start with one of those rather than fitting a root barrier to the wrong tree.

One irrigation habit makes a real difference either way: water deeply and infrequently rather than little and often. Frequent shallow watering trains roots to stay at the surface, which is precisely the behaviour that cracks paving.