Our new tree unit is now complete and even with all this rain Ta-dah no flooding! Our old tree unit had been doing its job displaying trees and keeping them upright and in straight lines for more years than I care to mention. We had upgraded so many areas of the nursery, don’t get me wrong there are still plenty of areas that need more work but little by little over the last couple of years. This time it was the turn of our tree unit, this was the area that held all our trees from 18litre through to 60Litre roughly speaking these are all trees between 10ft tall and 18ft tall, smaller than that we don’t have a huge range and above that they move onto our mature tree unit.

The problem with this old unit was that our tree selection has got bigger our size of trees is getting bigger, not just because time is going on but also the trees that you are asking us for are mainly larger sizes. What this meant in the tree unit was that the tree lines were becoming a little too close and that over the years the unit had become darker with the larger canopies of the trees and this was causing a wet, slippy unit that was not as we would like it. The problem with doing these upgrades is that they are specialist, the trees have to be relocated the ground dug out, new soak holes and water collection areas to name but a few, the other problem is that these upgrades although necessary are expensive but it needed doing so we budgeted €30,000 for the work.

The work took approximately six weeks and lots of hard work, we have hopefully future proofed the area by adding larger than currently required spacing between the rows of trees so that all the trees get the right space and light to grow as they would in the ground, the automated watering system has been completely upgraded so that each tree gets the exact amount of water and feed that it needs We are delighted with how the new unit looks and the proof will be in the trees, if we can get even 5% better growth then the unit will be worthwhile. If we can show visitors to the nursery, trees easily and it is more visually enticing them it has been worth it. The good news is that the work came in slightly under budget thanks to the great team we have around us and now all we have to do is put the trees back to their lovely new home, they will all be getting re-potted, pruning, re-caning where necessary and putting into the unit ready. For now though we have started lifting our rootballed trees and hedging and these are ready for sale in the next week or two.

The trees in the field ready to be rootballed