How to choose a tree you will keep for fifty years

A mature tree is one of the few things you can buy that will outlast the house it stands beside. That deserves a slower decision than a photograph and a price. Here is how we suggest you make it.

Start with the place, not the species

Before any botanical name, look at where the tree will live. How much room is there overhead and underground? What does the afternoon sun do? Is the soil heavy or free-draining? A tree chosen for its place will still look right in fifty years. A tree chosen from a wish list may fight its position for decades.

Sometimes that walk shows the job is a screen along a fence rather than a tree at all. For that, an advanced lilly pilly hedge from The Hedge Guys, supplied and planted from South East Queensland to Sydney, is the honest answer, and it leaves the tree budget for the one specimen that matters.

Then read the tree from the ground up

When you walk the rows, start at the base. Look for the root flare, the gentle widening where trunk becomes root. It should be visible at soil level. Follow the trunk: you want steady taper and a straight line through the tree, not a graft of corrections. Then stand back and read the canopy. Good structure means well-spaced branches and a balanced head that will take pruning gracefully as it matures.

Choose it in person

Photographs serve a tree well enough, but every numbered specimen in our ground is an individual, and the differences between two trees of the same species and size are exactly what you are paying for. Walk around it. Look up into it. Measure it against its neighbours. This is a decision made with confidence in person, and we would genuinely rather you came.

Visits to both farms are by appointment. Bring your plans, bring your landscape architect if you have one, and allow time. The right tree tends to introduce itself.