First Tree Planting - Nuttall Oak

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In my last blog post, I ended with a picture of the corner of my yard and a big red "X".  Obviously from the subject of this post it is obvious that I planned to plant a tree there, and not just any tree it had to be the perfect tree.

A little background on me and trees:

I am a little bit of a tree snob, there are only certain varieties that I like.  What I look for in a tree is that it has a strong central leader at least the first 6 to 10 ft up the tree.  Then coming off that central leader, I like a nice even branching structure.  I also prefer deciduous trees that have great fall color, mostly red.  At my old house, I planted several red maple varieties because they fit all those characteristics.  However, red maples grow a lot of surface roots and they make landscaping difficult around them.  Because of this I knew I didn't want red maples at my new house.  When we moved into the new house, I had been researching trees for weeks on the web and then it hit me.

At our church there are some of the most beautiful trees that I have ever seen.  They have a wonderful branching structure, strong central leader, beautiful pyramidal to oval shape, just great looking trees.  I asked someone who worked at the church if they knew what kind of trees they were.  After some research, they told me Nuttall Oaks.  I was like, say that again, never heard of it.

Within minutes I was on my phone googling them and within five minutes I knew this was the one.  It has all the characteristics I want and even more.  It turns out this is an under used tree, but has all the great characteristics of so many other oaks without any bad ones.  It has well behaved roots and actually prefers wet sites which was good for me because the area is kind of a gulley.  Here is a nice article about the Nuttall Oak.

Ok, I know that was probably way too much background information for a blog post, but I get pretty passionate about my trees.  I will stop there and suggest you look up the Nuttall Oak, now on to the pics.

So here is the spot with the big red "X" marking it

 

I purchased a 2.5 inch caliper tree from a local nursery.

I wanted something big for this site because I want it to fill in fast.  

Ball and burlap trees of this size are too big for me to handle.

These two guys were good, they made short work of digging in the hard clay.

Here she is, a big one, over 15 ft tall.

They rolled it into a wheel barrow and had to muscle it up there.

You can see how tall it is compared to the guys.

Here it is all finished, I can't wait to watch it grow.

Another perspective from farther away.

You have to take a picture to commemorate a tree planting.