Established 2019
Answer four questions about the spot. You will get three picks, our first choice at the top and why it is first, plus what we would recommend against there. It takes about a minute and it costs nothing.
People ask about size meaning the tree on the lot. That is the smaller of the two questions.
The size you buy. Trees come in a range of sizes and we are happy to help you pick the right one. Bigger is not automatically better. A larger tree leaves more of its root system behind when it is dug, so it spends its first few years recovering rather than growing. A smaller tree often catches up, and sometimes passes it. Which size makes sense depends on the spot, what you want out of it, and how much watering you are honestly going to do.
The size it ends up. This is the one that costs money later. That sapling is a foot across the trunk today and the tag does not shout about the sixty feet of canopy coming. We get called out to trees growing into a roof, into a driveway, into a neighbor's fence or into a primary line, and a good number of those started as a reasonable looking tree put in a spot that could not hold what it turned into. Nobody did anything wrong on purpose. The effects just take fifteen years to show up.
Every pick above lists the mature size, because that is the number worth planning around.
You can pick perfectly and still lose the tree. The most common thing we find on a struggling young tree has nothing to do with what species it is. It is planted too deep, with the root flare buried, so the trunk sits in wet soil and the tree slowly declines for years without ever showing you a single dramatic symptom.
The flare is where the trunk widens out into the roots. It belongs at or just above the soil line, visible. If your tree goes into the ground like a telephone pole with no taper at the bottom, that is worth a second look before the mulch goes on. More on that in our root flare guide.
We will come look at the spot before anything goes in the ground, at no charge, and tell you what we think. Tree work changes fast and no two yards are the same, which is a good part of why 20+ years of navigating tricky tree situations is worth having on your side of it.
Source: Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, Grayson County, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of North Texas Trees, by D. Chad Cummings, PhD, March 2023. Names Shumard oak, bur oak and chinquapin oak as common native ornamental trees planted here for landscaping and shade, names post oak and blackjack oak as natives endemic to the blackland prairie, splits upland from bottomland species, describes Callery pear as rapidly growing and subsequently weak, and lists eastern redbud, American plum, Mexican plum and Carolina buckthorn as alternatives to plant instead.
Source: Texas A&M Forest Service, Texas Tree Selector, for mature height and spread.
Source: NC State Extension, Callery Pear, on Ohio, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Kansas enacting bans between 2021 and 2024.
Call, text, or send a photo of where you are thinking. Estimates are always free.