Guides
The bits people wish they'd known first.
Short, specific, and written for cold, wet, windy Tasmanian ground.
Month by month
It's Aug. Here's what's ready.
Pick a month to see what we'd be sending out and what we'd tell you to plant.
, .
Guide 01
How to plant a tree so it lives.
The hole matters more than anything you put in it. Dig it twice as wide as the pot and no deeper. A tree planted low sits in water and rots at the collar.
Rough up the sides. A hole dug in clay with a spade gets a glazed wall the roots won't cross, and you end up with a tree that stays in a pot-shaped hole for years.
Don't backfill with compost. Fill with the soil you dug out, so the roots have no reason to stay in the hole. Mulch the surface instead, and keep it off the trunk.
Then water properly. Twenty litres once a week beats two litres daily, it pulls roots down instead of holding them at the surface. Keep that up for two summers and you're done.
Guide 02
Why bare-root is worth the wait.
From June to August, deciduous trees are asleep. We can lift them out of the field with no soil at all, which makes them light, cheap to freight, and much faster to establish than the same tree in a pot.
A bare-root apple planted in July will usually overtake a potted one planted in November, because its roots go straight into your soil instead of circling in a ball of someone else's potting mix.
The catch is the window. Once buds move, we stop lifting. Order in May or June and we'll book you in.
- Orders open
- May
- Lifting
- June – August
- Suits
- Apples, pears, cherries, quince
- Also
- Ornamental pear, maple, birch
Guide 03
Spacing a hedge you won't regret.
Almost everyone plants too close, then spends fifteen years cutting a hedge that never fills at the base.
- Portuguese Laurel
- 60 – 80 cm
- Pittosporum 'Screenmaster'
- 80 cm – 1 m
- Griselinia
- 70 – 90 cm
- Photinia 'Red Robin'
- 70 – 90 cm
- English Box (low edge)
- 25 – 30 cm
- Coastal Rosemary
- 60 – 80 cm
One, almost always. A staggered double row costs twice as much, takes twice the water and gives you a hedge that's hard to cut on both faces. Two rows only earn their place as a windbreak on an exposed boundary.
Sooner than feels right. Tip prune in the first season, even though the plants look small, that's what thickens the base. A hedge left to run up and clipped later stays thin at the bottom forever.
150 mm stock catches an advanced plant within about three seasons and costs a third as much. For a 30 m boundary that's the difference between a weekend job and a serious invoice.