I have just purchased this tree and wish to plant it on the Northeast (morning sun) side of my house within 5 feet of a paver brick driveway. Will the root system interfere with my driveway (lifting of the paver bricks)?
This is a tree. A Kousa in a Seattle park had an average crown spread of 48 1/2 ft. some years ago. Nevermind about the bricks, you probably don't have room for the branches.
Are you sure you are talking about Satomi? According to the info on the Net Satomi is a small tree. According to https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/details?plantid=537 ultimate height 4-8 metres, ultimate spread 4-8 metres, time to ultimate height 20-50 years. So, the spread is quite far from what you mention in your post. The info on other websites is similar. As for roots interfering with the pavers, I would not worry that such a small tree could do much damage. Probably it would prefer more sun but a few hours in the morning should do.
'Miss Satomi' shows no sign of being particularly dwarf, therefore should be expected to grow more or less as large as other Kousa. Here are a couple of additional records for C. kousa: 41' x 2'6" x 36' Chester County, PA (1980) 28' x 4'2" x 36' Greenwich, CT (1988) In both cases an average crown spread of 36' had been achieved by the 1980s (species was introduced to US in 1860s). In my area there are thousands of other examples of Kousa dogwoods more than 10' across. It is a tree, with the typical shape produced by an uncrowded example being a vase or similar form involving multiple long branches coming from comparatively near the ground. And flowering dogwoods such as this species cannot have their branches lopped back without their structure being spoiled.
8 m of course is 24.6 ft. So the RHS representation basically corresponds to what I am saying. If the tree needs to stay within 5 ft. in the one direction, it is not going to be suitable. Note that such representations are by definition highly artificial as trees vary a lot in response to site conditions and other variables that affect their growth and development, such as how they were propagated. That is why the RHS depiction is giving a size range, rather than a single size. But that range will still be too narrow to be completely accurate. A 'Satomi' of the same age in a good spot could be three times the size of another, that had experienced different circumstances. Stands of wild tree species show this kind of thing routinely, that's why coring is used by tree scientists to get accurate ages of individual trees - you cannot tell by looking from the outside. I once worked on measuring annual growth within a stand of silver firs in the southern WA Cascade Mountains where the suppressed small examples in the understory were as old as the full sized ones overhead. And woody plants do not grow to a certain size and then stop growing, while remaining attractive and vital. Even the tallest coast redwoods add height every year.
