What a farm visit looks like

Most of our trees are chosen standing in the row, by the person who will live with them. A farm visit is not a formality; it is the best hour you will spend on your garden. Here is what one looks like.

Before you come

Visits to both farms are by appointment, so a grower can walk with you rather than wave from a tractor. Book through the Visit & Contact page and tell us roughly what you are planting for: screening, shade, a feature, an avenue. If you have plans, bring them. If you have a landscape architect, bring them too.

What to bring

Closed shoes, a hat, and the measurements that matter: the width of your narrowest gate or side path, roughly where overhead powerlines run, and a few photographs of the planting position. Ten minutes of measuring at home makes an hour at the farm twice as useful.

Walking the rows

Expect to walk, and expect the choice to get easier as you do. Trees of the same species and size differ in ways photographs cannot carry: the lean of a trunk, the balance of a canopy, the way one specimen simply suits the picture in your head. Start at the root flare and read upwards, and when a tree declares itself, we tag it.

After the visit

A tagged tree can be held against your planting programme while root preparation is staged, which for an ex-ground specimen is done over a long period rather than a short one. Your quotation follows: the tree, the lift, delivery and craneage assessed for your site. Then, on the day, the tree leaves our rows in the morning and is placed by crane where the garden calls for it.

Ravensbourne Farm is in the highland air near Toowoomba; Donkin Farm is in the wet tropics near Innisfail. Choose a farm, and come and walk it.