Make Room for Trees

By Bess Taylor

 

 

February here in the Northern Virginia piedmont can be a frustrating month. One day it will be seventy degrees, the next day it will snow. Daffodil greens will be springing up from the ground encased in the crystal coatings of an ice storm.  You can’t count on February for anything. So don’t. That’s my advice.

 

Instead, take this time to think about what you’d like to see in your yard. A nice blanket of snow makes for a great blank page on which to project your visions of flowerbeds, vegetable gardens and shrubs. When wild northwestern winds shake your shutters, imagine what a nice row of pines could do to buffer those winds. 

 

Flowers and vegetables certainly benefit from careful planning but can be planted and admired relatively quickly once that planning is done. Shrubs and even more so trees need not only planning and research, they also take more time to reach their full potential. Those of us with 30-year mortgages usually have the time to wait, but not a lot to spend. Luckily, this can work in our favor, especially where we live.

 

The Virginia Department of Forestry offers tree seedlings for sale to public and private landowners at low cost to encourage the planting of trees in our state. What does this mean? It means that if you want 5 foot tall semi-mature pine trees you can go to a commercial nursery and find some lovely ones, but be prepared to pay a lot for them. You will also have to transport them and make sure their heavy root-balls are properly put into the ground to protect your investment. If you can manage this, then by all means go for it. The option my wallet vastly prefers is to order bare-root seedlings (averaging around a foot tall) from the Department of Forestry for only one or two dollars per tree.  Just follow the planting and aftercare directions and let nature, love and time do the rest.

 

The VDF online catalogue shows an alphabetical list of the the seedlings offered, along with descriptions and some links to photos. There are thirty or forty kinds from which to choose, from oaks to dogwoods, redbuds to spruces and more.  Pay close attention to how high and wide these trees can grow and plan your yard accordingly. They may look puny and far apart when you plant them (if you do it right) but once they’re in, they tend to have a habit of growing tall and full when you aren’t looking. Avoid placing tall-growing trees beneath overhead utility wires and wide-growing trees near walkways, driveways and buildings. Trees given lots of room are happy trees.

 

The site’s online store offers shopping basket convenience. Look in the left sidebar for the different tree categories. You may notice that these trees are not offered individually, but in bundles. Some of these bundles range from 50-100 trees or more. If you do not need that many trees at once, you can go in with friends on a purchase (5 friends could get ten trees each) or visit the smaller bundled items on the Specialty Packs page which features packages of 25-30 trees for as little as $1.75 per seedling. Not bad. I had to call them to clarify about the Riparian bundle packs, which say they are $10 for a bundle of ten. They are $10 for 10, but you have to order three different bundles to get them for that price, so it will be a $30 order. Considering that you can easily spend $30 for one mature tree at a nursery, getting thirty very young trees for the same price is worth the wait to me. The prices include packaging and shipping. The Virginia 5% sales tax is included on online store orders. (There is also an explanation for “Riparian”- a word used to describe trees that make a good buffer around creek and river beds.)

 

These trees are on sale now until the middle of April. If you know someone who might want trees but would prefer a hard copy of the Virginia Department of Forestry seedling catalog, you can print one out from this page under “Ordering”. 

 

Give a tree a home and you’ll get so much back from it. A thoughtfully-placed deciduous tree (the kind that drops it’s leaves once a year) can reduce your heating and cooling bills by shading your house in summer and letting the sun shine on it in winter. A row of evergreen trees can help sheild your house from harsh winds, road noises and unwanted views year-round. The pink blossoms of the early-flowering redbud can snap you out of your winter blahs. Never mind that they also make oxygen and provide a place for birds to roost and sing. Take a look around your late-winter yard and imagine how it could look a few years from now, graced with fine young trees you planned for and planted yourself. Fifty years from now your tomato plants will be long gone, but an oak planted this year will be just reaching its prime. Make history in your little corner of the world. Plant a tree.