In August this year we started doing something we’ve never done before – busily potting some 500 trees.
They were not for a client. They were for us. Now they are sitting in rows at our own nursery. Most of them will not go into a garden for at least a year or two – possibly more. Which raises an obvious question. Why would a residential garden design and construction company like us, after 35 years of buying trees from wholesalers like everyone else, suddenly start growing our own?
The short answer is that we got tired of the phone calls we had to make for many clients every spring. Usually the client’s job was ready and the crew was standing by ready to plant, but the tree we specified in the design was not available. Not the one we wanted. Not in the size we wanted. Not until autumn. No matter how many calls we made.
Why residential gardens always get the leftover plants
At Whyte Gardens we only design and build private gardens. Usually for one or two families at a time. Most residential gardens tend to need only a few of one type of tree and maybe one or two of another. Each chosen for a particular spot. Often at a specified size. One thing we never need is a hundred of the same plant.
And that is exactly the problem. Every landscaper in Melbourne buys from the same handful of wholesale growers. In the planting season those growers naturally serve their biggest customers first. A developer or a council buying trees by the truckload goes to the front of the queue. A landscape designer calling for four carefully chosen trees finds themselves way down the back.
So what is available for a private garden in October is generally only what the bigger orders left behind. We may get the tree we want but in a smaller size. Perhaps a similar tree but of a different variety. Or a tree that has sat in its pot for a season too long and is now root-bound. The garden gets built, but it’s planted with substitutes. Most clients never know this. But the designer does. And it stings, because a tree is often one of the most important items in a design – especially a feature tree.
Why the tree matters more than anything else in a garden design
A tree is the only element in a garden that cannot be fixed later. You can repave an area in 10 years time if you have to. You can upgrade your outdoor dining setting. You can even replant a garden bed. But cannot magically make a tree twelve years older than it currently is.
A feature tree in a garden will set the scale for the whole garden. It will decide where the shade falls at 4pm in January. It will frame the view from the kitchen, screen the neighbour’s upstairs window from looking down into your pool or give your guests somewhere to sit under. Get it right and the garden will look settled from the first week. But plant a smaller version of the size you really wanted and you, and the the garden, will spend 5 years waiting to become what it was designed to be.
So when a grower says to us we can’t have the tree we want “until autumn”, that is not a small inconvenience. It can be the whole garden losing its centre.
What growing our own plants will change for you, and us
There are three things having our own nursery will provide you, and us, with:
Choice. When we specify a tree for your garden in the future, we will be able to walk down a row and pick the exact one we want. Not a tree of a similar species in a smaller size. But the exact right tree we want. The one with the right shape for the corner it is going into. The one whose lowest branch is at the right height for you to sit under. The one that leans slightly in the way the design needs it to. A wholesaler can send you a tree. But having your own nursery lets you choose the one you want from a large variety.
Timing. The 500 trees we potted back in August will be ready when they are ready. But all of them will will be ours. When a project reaches planting time during the peak season, the tree we want will already be waiting for us at our place. We can lift it onto a truck and drive it to the site. Nobody else can buy it. The spring phone calls we used to have to make, will stop happening.
Quality. The final thing. A tree that has been grown for a garden we have already designed can be shaped for that garden while it grows. It can be pruned for the specific position. Or re-potted before it gets root-bound. It will also be hardened by exposure to Melbourne’s weather rather than trucked in from somewhere warmer. It arrives on site as a tree that has been looked after, not one that survived a wholesale yard.
Why are we growing our own trees first, and not plants?
We started with trees rather than just plants and shrubs, because trees take time to grow into what we need them to be. A shrub can grow in just one season. But trees can takes years. And those years cannot be hurried.So the sooner the first batch is in pots the sooner the first batch is ready. Starting now means we will have some trees ready for gardens in 2027 and 2028.
What our own tree nursery will means if you are planning a garden
If you chose to have your garden designed by us over the next year or two, some of the trees we include in your plan may already be growing. Not as just a line on a drawing. But an actual tree, in a pot, at our nursery. You can even come and look at before it goes in. That is an odd thing for a landscape designer to be able to say. But it is the whole reason we did this.
A garden is built once. The tree is the part you cannot do again. We would rather grow it ourselves than hope there is one left for us come springtime.
