Plant collection

Semi Advanced Trees

Semi advanced is the grade most suburban gardens should buy, and the one most buyers scroll past on the way to something bigger. It runs from 330mm pots up to about 45L, where the advanced grades take over. Pot and bag labels do not line up: a 330mm pot holds about 20 litres of mix, a 430mm about 45. Some lines here only sell in bigger grades, so read the sizes before you order. Two people and a wheelbarrow move one, and it fits through a side gate. If a neighbour's upstairs window looks into your bedroom and you want that gone by Christmas, buy larger and skip this page. Semi advanced asks you for a season, sometimes two.

Why the smaller tree catches the bigger one

A container tree arrives with only the roots that fit the pot. Big canopy, small root ball, long stall: transplant check. At 45L it runs a season. At 200L and beyond, two or three, which is why semi advanced stock often draws level with much bigger trees of the same species within five years. Fast and moderate to fast species close the gap themselves, so they are the clearest buy here: water gum, brush cherry, manna ash. Taprooted trees invert the rule. A Valley Oak held too long in a big container arrives with a kinked or severed taproot and never anchors, so buy those small. Palms are the exception. No taproot, and they move at any size, so for visible trunk now, go to the big stock in palm trees.

Two fast growers to think twice about

White cedar is quick, and stocked here, but it fruits heavily and the fruit is poisonous. Dogs are the usual casualty, and children have died eating the berries. Dog or small kids, plant something else. Leopard tree is the other one: good bark, quick shade, and surface roots that lift paving, crack driveways and find drains. South east Queensland councils have discouraged it on narrow blocks for years.

Where you plant changes when you plant

A 45 litre root ball holds less reserve than a 200 litre one, so timing matters more. On Perth's alkaline coastal sand the water is gone before you finish coiling the hose. Plant May to July, with a wetting agent and a saucer of soil to stop run off. Melbourne's western basalt clay is the reverse. Dig a neat hole in that black cracking ground and you have built a sump. Plant high on a mound, flare above the surrounding level. Brisbane looks forgiving. September to November is not, at this root ball size, so aim for February to April. Around Orange and the Southern Highlands deciduous stock goes in through dormancy, while the subtropical material will not see out a winter: frangipani, the trumpet trees, that leopard tree with the paving-lifting roots. Young brush cherry burns as well.

The first year is where these are lost

Planting too deep kills more trees at this size than drought does. Scrape the mix back to the flare where the trunk widens into roots, and set it level with the ground. Most stand unaided at this size. The ones that do not want one low stake and a loose tie, off inside twelve months, or you get a stick that snaps. Water deeply, and let the soil set the frequency: hydrophobic Perth sand can want three soakings in a February week, basalt clay drowns a tree on two. Keep the whipper snipper clear. Trunks this thin ringbark in one careless pass.

For a clipped formal hedge, order one cultivar in one grade in one drop. Mixed grades never even up in a straight line. If the job cannot wait a season, step up to advanced trees or mature 100L stock. Feature trees groups the same catalogue by species.

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