Large Yellow Locust tree move . 14 inch caliper trunk, over 40 feet tall
Planted in early 1960’s now being saved and moved to new location on site.
Gleditsia Tricanthous – Sunburst – leaves bright yellow in spring.
Mature to medium green, Foliage is Golden yellow in fall.
Happy Victoria Day weekend! What a beautiful day! The yard is alive with flowers and everything looks so fresh and green. We have moved several hundred trees already to our new location so only 27000 to go! Over the next few weeks we are promoting our moving sale – so feel free to come in and browse. We just know something will entice you and that will relieve of us having to move one more tree – every tree counts! There are thousands birds nesting in the trees and it is so noisy around here. Interestingly enough we were delivering and installing a tree to a residential property in Mississauga – a beautiful Serbian Spruce. It was moved from the nursery and loaded onto a large diesel truck on an angle. It was then tarped and traveled 20 km to it’s new home. There it was then loaded onto a machine and planted in the backyard. Once installed the foreman noticed a nest of blue eggs in the tree. The only way those eggs could have survived that trip is if the mother was sitting on the nest. Sure enough later in the day they noticed the mother sitting on her eggs. Such a nice story – hope the father finds her! The nursery is changing daily as prepare for big move so when I go to look for a certain tree I can’t find it. And then later in the day I find it in our island planting or tucked in the heal-in area. The yellow Magnolias look stunning – the pictures don’t do them justice. The Crab apples are all in bloom and the nursery is alive with colour. The Redbuds draw your to their neon pink blooms. If it wasn’t for my colleague Wayne – I would have missed our Red Delicious Apple tree covered in blooms. Last year the frost hit the blooms and we got no fruit – so hopefully this year we will be able to sample some. Here are are few samples of the hundreds of pictures I take…enjoy…
Red Delicious Apple Tree covered in blooms
Rows of Yellow Magnolias
Yellowbird Magnolia bloom
Yellow Magnolia Bloom
Columnar Crab Apple sin Bloom
Weeping Crab in Bloom
Ohio Buckeye Blooms
Rows of Ornamental Pears
Rows of Princeton Gold Yews
Red Purple Beech
Robin’s Nest
Just a couple of days ago everything was pushing bud and ready to pop. Now, a couple of days later it is all popping out. Take a look at the pictures below and see what happening. I have also included some pictures of what is happening as we prepare to move to our new digs. Thousands of trees have been moved – only twenty five thousand to go! It is hard to believe that the same time last year everything had finished blooming by now.
Espalier Pear in Bloom!
Japanese Maple starting to leaf out
Serviceberries in bloom and my dog enjoying the spring scents
Rows of Ornamental Pears in bloom
Japanese Maple ‘orange Dream’
Lilac Std ‘Miss Kim’
Redbud beginning to bloom
Everything always happens at once. Especially here and in the Spring. Everyday I come in here something else is blooming or some more leaves are coming out. We are digging hundreds of trees at the moment and moving them to our new location before they leaf out. People are calling and coming in anxious for our plants to be showing off a bit more spring growth. In the new age of technology I am constantly being asked to go out and take a picture of something so I can send it to them so they can see what it looks like before they come out. So I think that is going to be how I handle part of this blog. I am going to post some of the pictures of what people are asking for and also what is going on here at the farm. So stay tuned – as I am downloading pictures every day you might as well see what people are asking for…
Weeping Green Beech
Cornelian Cherry
Weeping Willow turning yellow…
Lilac Buds Ready to Burst
Japanese Maple ‘Orange Dream’
Row of Magnolias
Magnolia Blooms
Kwansan Cherry Blooms
Japanese Maple in back field
Camperdown Elm
Boxwood Sprial – Nice bright green
Japanese Maple buds coming along!
Japanese Maples
The evergreens starting to come out cold storage
Blue Spruce – Still a nice blue colour
Beech Trees – Still looking winterish
Lilac Std -The buds are there
More stock coming out
Specimen Spruce
Pine Topiary – Looking good
More stock slowly starting to come out
My dog enjoying the dry field!
Redbud in bloom
I dunno where you live in southern Ontario but this past week has not been spring like it all. It can be sunny one minute and then a blizzard the next. Like literally – snow squalls! But enough about the stupid weather – we our starting our Spring regardless. We are moving plant material out of the poly houses All the Japanese Maples have been moved out as well as all the large boxwood and pine topiaries. It is still cold and blustery out there and it is funny to see the machines hauling trees in what looks like a snow storm and poof – it is sunny again. It is happening here again today sun and snow. Some of the fields are still too muddy to get into but as soon as we can, we will get into them and start snapping pictures. I have been viewing other nursery sites and they have pictures of plants in full bloom – but we do reality here – so you see things as we get them and as they come into bloom. Here is a few pictures of what is starting to happen here…
Last year (2012) at this time on this day March 22 – it was 24 degrees Celsius and sunny. I was wearing short sleeves and outside soaking up the much needed sun and snapping pictures of the ever changing landscape here. This year (2013) – March 22 – it is 2 degrees Celsius and overcast with the occasional sun popping out – which I guess is better than the past week with snow flurries and grey days. I have not been taking pictures cause everything is covered with snow and it has been windy to boot. Who wants to trudge outside in that? Having said that the sun has come out and I stepped out to take some pictures of the nursery as the snow slowly fades away. It is cold and windy and the only one who enjoyed it was my dog! Spring is in the trees – the buds are there – just waiting to pop. I couldn’t get into the fields as they are frozen and snowy. However – it will change soon and then all of a sudden we will be a bustle of activity. There will be alot of changing around here this year and it makes me kind of sad – which was I haven’t been blogging lately (that and the internet was down for a week). We are moving our nursery this Spring which will make for lots of impromptu sales and liquidation offerings as well as getting our new facility under way – which will be exciting. We will sell, move, transplant over 30,000 trees – which to my knowledge has never been done. And this is exciting – cause I don’t know how we are going to do it! But as with everything here at PAO we manage to get the job done. The crews are out planting some 20 foot pines today and the phones have started to ring – so here we go…..
The lower yard where the smaller plant material goes…
The shade house and the loading area (and my dog)
The healin bed
Evergreens in the island bed
Entrances to the tree blocks and the fields
The island bed
A large Dawn Redwood ready to be moved
More of the tree blocks…
Evergreens in the laneway
Large White Pine in specimen box
Even the rock bridge has to be moved!
My dog not listening to me to come back into the office!
I have returned to the world of blogging – finally! The winter has been busy planning for Spring 2013 as well as wrapping up some of our last years installations. We have had two months to prepare and we are no where near ready. If we have an early March like last year it is going to be crazy. The hiatus from blogging is not because I haven’t been working on it is that I had to change my platform due to the amount of pictures that I put on my blog. But that’s what my blog is all about – pictures of the ever changing scenery around here. As we specialize in rare and unique products and rare and unique installations – they need to be photographed!. We spent most of November and December and into January doing a large installation of huge trees in the town of Goderich. On August 21, 2011 an F3 tornado ripped through this pretty little town. The winds were up to 360 kilometers per hour and it lasted only 12 seconds. In that short time it killed one man and destroyed homes and businesses and changed the lives of the people of Goderich forever. The pictures are quite devastating. The Courthouse Square Park is in the centre of town and is the hub of the town and is where people came to gather. It was a beautiful spot with lots of big trees for people to sit under in the summer. That is where the tornado whipped through and destroyed all the trees. Thus with all re-building going on the people of the town wanted the park to be re-built as well. That’s where we came in. We were approached by the Town to help re-build the park with large trees. And that we did. Fifty foot trees came back to the centre of the town! It is started with a huge parade of trees coming into the town – escorted by fire trucks and police cars. It was nice to see people gathered for the first tree being put into the ground, Some people were actually crying. So for the months of November and December we trekked back and forth to Goderich with more trees. 176 of them to be exact. It was unique and very satisfying project that made us feel good about helping re-build the town. The townsfolk were wonderful and very supportive. The Town of Goderich with whom I had to deal with were just as wonderful as well. In an attempt to some up the past few months work and a repeat visit in the Spring I will put a gallery of pictures together. I took thousands of pictures from the beginning of this project until the end. It will be quite exciting to go back in the Spring and take pictures of the final project.
The first of the trucks arrives on the scene at Court House Square after the fire trucks
The Parade Begins…
I have a backlog of all my pictures with all the loading and preparation we did for the parade of trees that we participated in this past Saturday, November 10th, 2012 in the Town of Goderich. It was a huge success. But I will have more on that shortly. I think I should go into some detail of how it all coordinated before the actual parade. The nursery was a hub of activity this past week, from digging to loading. And of course, these are not just small trees – they are huge. With many milestones and unexpected things happening we managed to get it done. It was all very exciting and we are still in the process with much more to do. But here is a glimpse of the hard work behind the scenes. Most of these trees are too big to be dug with a tree spade and require hand digging and to be drum strung. It is better for the survival of the trees as we know exactly where the roots end. As you can see from the pictures it is a lot of hard work and requires special transportation. Out of the 150 trees we have for Goderich – this is only a glimpse. We are still digging. If anyone was at the parade and saw the first planting on Saturday – there are still bigger specimens to arrive. As you can see from the pictures below – we still have alot of trees still to come..
It is Halloween already! Geez – where has the time gone??? We thought the Spring was busy – nobody prepared us for the Fall! We have been busy this past month selecting and digging large tree specimens for the Town of Goderich. A little over a year ago the most powerful tornado to hit the province in years swept through the southwestern Ontario town of Goderich, killing one person and devastating the picturesque community on the shore of Lake Huron. Century-old buildings, churches and homes were either damaged or destroyed as well as many of the old trees. Winds of roughly 280 km/h carved a path about 500 metres wide through the town’s centre – right through the downtown core. In the downtown core is the Court House Square that was home to hundreds of large trees. Only 3 remain. It has taken the community over year to generate a master plan and start the re-building the town. That is where we come in – we are replacing some of the trees in the town square. But they couldn’t be just any trees there had to be large specimens to re-create the canopy that was once there. The trees will range anywhere between 30 – 50 feet and will require a large crane to to lift them. They will be moved into the Town of Goderich on large flatbed trucks – some of them will only fit one per truck. Quite an effort was put into selecting the trees through the Director of Operations and Parks Superintendent of the Town of Goderich, as well as Landscape Architect based out of Toronto. Most of the trees are native to Southern Ontario and include Oaks, Maples, Chestnuts to name a few. I have includes some pictures of the tagging and digging process and will be updating frequently – here is the beginning of a great project that we are so happy to be involved with…
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| Black Oak Tagged |
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| Dawn Redwood being drum strung |
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| Freemannii Maples |
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| Kentucky Coffee Tree |
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| Beginning to dig Pin Oaks |
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| Showing the proceedure…. |
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| Tagging Red Sunset Maples |
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| Scarlet Oak Tagged |
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| More Scarlet Oaks |
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| Birch Trees Tagged |
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| Red Oak |
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| Blue Beech |
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| Green Vase Zelkovas Tagged |
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| Digging of the Elms |
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| Elms at the end of the day |
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| Kentucky Coffee Trees after digging |
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| The Elms beig dug |
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| Starting of another day of digging |
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| Root ball of the Dawn Redwood |
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| Pin Oaks |
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| Finishing up the Pin Oaks… |