Sequencing site works and aftercare around the Queensland year

A delivery truck brings its own crane, and it needs firm ground within seven to eight metres of the hole. That one requirement shapes a landscape programme more than anything else on the drawing, because it decides which surfaces have to be finished, which protected, and which cannot be built yet. What follows is about sequencing the site and funding the aftercare, not about choosing a month.

Everything that moves heavy plant belongs in front of the trees

A crane truck, an excavator and a bobcat all work across the tree zone, and every one of them is a threat to a planted tree and to the soil around it. Before trees come near the area, this should be done and signed off:

• Services located, installed and backfilled: power, communications, stormwater, sewer and the irrigation mainline. Trenching through a root zone afterwards undoes the work.
• Finished surface levels set and pegged at every pit. The root flare has to sit correct to the finished level, not to the level the excavator found on the day: topsoil and turf arriving later is how a correctly planted tree ends up buried. See planting depth and the root flare.
• Retaining walls, kerbs, edge restraints and drainage working, so water leaves the pit instead of standing in it.
• Decompaction across the whole planting zone rather than the pit alone. A generous pit dug into compacted fill is a bathtub with a tree in it.
• A crane standing area and a route to it, with ground protection wherever the finished surface matters.
• Water on site, connected and proven.

Two habits cause most of the damage. One is opening pits well ahead in ground that then gets rain, so the hole holds water and the sides glaze. The other is bringing trees in early and building around them, which collects bark wounds, root zone traffic and a buried flare.

In the wet tropics the wet season is an access problem first

Our northern farm sits at Utchee Creek near Innisfail, so we watch what that country does from November through April. The rain is not the issue. Saturated ground is. Outriggers need bearing plates, haul routes rut, and a truck that cannot get within seven to eight metres of the hole cannot place the tree, however well the pit is prepared. Compaction inflicted on wet soil is close to permanent, and it lands on the soil you are asking a tree to root into.

Programme for it: gravel or matting on the haul route, a defined crane pad, and stand down days in the schedule rather than argued about later. Cyclone season runs across the same months, so access can be cut for days, contractors get pulled onto storm work, and deliveries slip through nobody's fault. Weed pressure is fast up there too, and a maintenance interval that suits a southern site will leave a tropical one swamped at the base.

In the highlands the pressure comes in a dry, frosty winter

Ravensbourne is at 750 metres north west of Brisbane and gets real frost. Cold on its own is survivable for the species that belong there. What hurts is cold, wind and dry soil together, because the tree cannot replace what the wind takes. Winter is the dry part of the year in that country, so a schedule written around rainfall stops watering at the wrong point.

Mulch does more work there than anywhere else on the programme: 75 mm deep, held clear of the trunk, spread out past the edge of the ball. It moderates soil temperature, slows evaporation and keeps the mower away from bark. Frost settles in hollows, so two trees of one species on one site can have quite different winters depending on where the cold air drains.

Name the person who waters, and fund the water

Establishment watering is 150 to 200 litres per tree, weekly for the first month, fortnightly for about six weeks after that, then only through prolonged dry spells. Written down it looks minor. Multiplied by the trees on the job it is a tanker, a person and a morning, repeatedly, applied slowly enough to soak the ball rather than run off it.

The common failure is not neglect, it is a gap in the contract. The contractor's obligations finish at one point in the defects period, the client's grounds team picks up at another, and there is a fortnight in the middle where the trees belong to nobody. Write it as its own line item: volume, frequency, water source, the person responsible, and what happens if restrictions change. An irrigation system is not the same thing as a tree being watered. Drippers laid over mulch wet the surrounding soil and can miss a fresh root ball entirely. Water the ball itself while it is establishing, and check by hand rather than by looking at a controller. There is more in our guide to watering and establishment.

Storm exposure changes staking, mulch and where you leave things

On an exposed northern site the loose material under a canopy matters as much as the tree. Star pickets, spare stakes, offcuts, pots, bins and furniture all become projectiles, and bark damage from flying steel is permanent. Clear the ground under new trees before the season, not during a warning.

A tree planted basket and all carries its stability in the ball. Ties still want checking at the start of the season and after every blow: firm enough that the ball is not rocking, slack enough that nothing bites, and off once they have done their job. Mulch floats in heavy rain, so keep it as a ring rather than a mound against the trunk. The mulch doughnut is not a matter of taste.

If you want the access assumptions tested before they are locked in, the notes on delivery and craneage set out what the truck needs. Send a site plan and we will tell you plainly where the crane will reach and where it will not.