It’s time to talk about naked trees..
It is cold outside and the garden is not looking inviting at all. There are jobs to do and that fence looks awful. Perhaps a little helping hand for the wildlife and replace it with some mixed native hedging or even single species for a more formal look. Hedging is often overlooked as a border or garden division material because in our busy lives we don’t have the time to plan ahead. We want instant impact, this often means hard landscaping. The cost of a ready made hedge in pots is sometimes prohibitive and the logistics of moving all that soil around is back breaking work – enter the bare rooted hedge/ trees.
📷 Images of bare rooted trees courtesy of Hopes Grove Nurseries
This is one of our recent instalments of a dormant bare-root hornbeam hedge. We used mycorrhizal fungi when planting. This fungi colonises the root system to enable nutrient absorption at a greater rate and therefore the new hedge will establish much quicker.
Bare-root trees adapt to the soil quickly because roots aren’t transitioning from container soil and trees are planted during dormancy, which gives them weeks of root growth that spring-planted container trees don’t benefit from. The shipping of bare rooted trees is more cost effective because you are not shipping dirt, you are just shipping the tree. This means less fuel, which means shipping just the green bit is “green” with a smaller carbon footprint.
Seems like a no brainer … Shouldn’t we always plant bare rooted trees? Well, there is a downside. Bare rooted trees are planted during their dormant period only and before they come in to bud, if you push the planting window too far, then you’re likely to suffer losses and have a huge water bill by the end of summer (not so green).
So the choice is yours – plan head and plant bare-rooted trees now potentially saving 40% on potted nursery trees, or plant in spring and have the stress of trees poking through the sunroof and then pay for a valet to clean up all that soil. You also might as well treat the kids to lunch out because they’re playing up in the back of the car too!
Taylor Landscapes 