So you’ve decided to plant a new tree or shrub this year. Excellent choice! But you may be wondering if there’s any advantage to arborist tree planting. Why should you hire an arborist to plant a tree?
There are usually a few options when it comes to tree planting. You can hire an arborist, you can do it yourself, or you may hire a gardener or landscaper to plant it. These can all be valid choices, but we’ll walk you through the top reasons you may want to hire an arborist to plant trees.
1. We Pick the Best Trees
If you walk into a nursery, do you know what to look for when picking a tree? Your arborist does. The average customer or avid home gardener may know to look for a tree that looks green and lush, but what else should you look for? Not all nurseries are created equally, and arborists have access to professional suppliers who grow the best stock.
The seedlings you see at big stores like Home Depot or Canadian Tire may be grown in southern climates that aren’t suited to Toronto’s climate. We buy all trees we plant from local nurseries and take care to select appropriate species for our weather. When it comes to picking up your new tree, we ensure the tree we’re going to plant isn’t suffering from damage, constrained growth due to ties, cables, or cages, or improper watering while at the nursery. You benefit from your arborist’s trained eye selecting the best-looking stock.
2. We Consider the Full Picture
A gardener or nursery salesperson might help you choose a tree to fit your vision for a garden bed or your aesthetic preference. As arborists, though, we know there’s more to it than that. We’ll help you choose the right tree not only for the planting space, but for your whole yard and even your neighbourhood.
If your neighbour has a pool close to the fence you want to plant by, we’ll take that into account, or if we’re replanting to replace a tree whose roots had a history of growing into the pipes below ground. A good arborist will consider what other trees and buildings are around, and ensure we have the exact right spot to plant the tree if your chosen location isn’t the perfect fit.
3. Trees Are Big
Saplings might seem small compared to other trees. If you had an 80-year-old maple removed and replaced by a 2-year-old sapling, the sapling looks downright puny in comparison. So, they should be simple to plant, right?
Let’s pause here. That little 2-metre tall sapling still comes with a giant root ball. Maybe you own a pickup truck, but that likely still won’t cut it for a new tree, especially if you’re looking at planting, say, a row of cedars. Saplings are huge, hefty, and need a lot of space to transport. Delivery doesn’t come cheap, either. If you order a nursery-stock tree, not only is there no way to get it into your SUV, you’re looking at hundreds of dollars in delivery costs.
Arborists have the infrastructure and the know-how to deal with the size of young trees. We have the connections to nurseries and the gear to get a tree from a nursery to your backyard. And we come with a crew of professionals accustomed to lifting heavy wood, roots, dirt, and branches to get that tree into its new home. Even if your brother-in-law promised to help.
4. It’s More Work Than You Think
Once you get that hefty little tree home, your work isn’t over. First, you need a big hole. A really big hole, for that giant root ball. You can’t cut corners here: if you give up too soon and don’t dig a big enough hole, you’re setting the tree up for failure. Planting a tree requires diligent attention to positioning your tree correctly.
Just digging the hole is a lot of work. Your regular yard tools may not even be up to the task, let alone your arms and your back. We’ve certainly fielded calls from homeowners who have a tree and a half-dug hole, who’ve started and given up.
After the hole is ready, you need to ensure the tree is placed properly inside it. If you’ve dug too far, you may end up with a tree planted too deeply, which also keeps your tree from growing properly. When your tree is finally placed correctly, you still need to fill in the hole and mulch your tree. Tree planting by arborists is all in a day’s work, but for homeowners, you could be signing on for several days of emergency hardware store trips and back pain.
5. No Junk Planted
We see this over and over: trees planted within the past couple years that have failed to thrive. Sometimes a homeowner calls us wringing their hands: “We just had these planted two years ago! They looked fine! We don’t know what’s wrong!”
And a quick look at the tree reveals exactly what’s wrong. Wire twisted around the base of the trunk that’s now grown into the tree and girdling the roots. Burlap sacking still wrapped around a now-overgrown root ball. Plastic or wire or ties around the stem that’s stunting growth.
All this stuff wrapped around a sapling is common in nursery stock, but it shouldn’t be planted with a new tree. Many gardeners, handypeople, or homeowners simply fail to remove wrapping, cages, wires, or ties when planting a new tree. Or cages or ties used for support on a newly-planted tree aren’t removed once the tree settles and is able to support itself, leading to the trunk growing into the supports, or just failing to grow.
Our arborists always take care to remove everything that doesn’t belong. The new tree is able to stretch its roots and grow appropriately in its stem. Removing all excess material also makes it easier to plant the tree at the correct depth, ensuring it doesn’t fail to thrive due to overly shallow or overly deep planting.
7. We Plant for Tomorrow
When you’re planting a tree, you’re planting for the future. We’ll advise you on native species, trees that are most resilient to climate, urban, and area conditions. Arborists think ahead to trees that will grow well in changing conditions, including nature and physical conditions. We’ll choose the tree that best meets your goals for shade, privacy, and aesthetics, today and tomorrow.
Why Arborist Tree Planting Is Best
Why risk the complications of DIYing tree planting? Your yard and your back will thank you — get an arborist to help. Book a consult today and we’ll help you find the right tree species to plant.
