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Mike

nice...this is something I would like to do too at some point......how many more trees do you plan on planting? How do you decide on what to plant?

We're running out of room, but if we see something we like we'll buy it. We don't window shop, we nursery shop we have most things that local nurses carry. We always read Dirr when we see something

To me, it looks like you have a lot of room left. Turn all that lawn into paths and think garden instead of a random placed collection of specimens. There's always room for more. You can even do a little culling as circumstances permit. Things happen and tastes change. Use a pole pruner where appropriate. Do shrubs have a place on you five acres? Groundcovers?

You have a lot of options still open.

Mike

You're probably right, but we don't have much sunny space left. We have done some culling. Our web set needs updating, but look here

http://www.dinsmores5acres.com/shrub-list/

Well that's really cool. I dream about buying a property with 2-5 acres of old field or grass, starting with a "blank canvas" (aside from a few existing mature trees) and create an arboretum of primarily native trees and shrubs, mostly started from seed. Instead of where I live now, which was heavily treed and overgrown, and I had to first remove many invasive trees and shrubs (including 5 50+ year old Norway maples) to plant what I wanted.

The overall landscape would of course include perennial, annual, and veggie gardens because even though they are higher maintenance I love flowers and love vegetables. Throw in a small meadow that is mowed 1 or 2x per year. There wouldn't be much grass when/if I get done with it.

I would like to do this at a cemetery....trees tend to last longer in such places

My arboretum/garden is just under 25 acres. I've had the property for about 10 years and have planted over 250 trees and shrubs. I've grown quite a bit of them from seeds and cuttings. I have a long way to go to reach capacity, but I am to a point that I realize I can't have every plant I want.

Like you, Lee, I don't really feel like I know exactly what I'm doing with design/placement. It's weird because I've designed a number of landscapes for homes and small businesses, and feel pretty confident with my ability to do that. When it comes to my arboretum though, it's just a completely different thing (or at least it is to me).

25 acres! I envy you. I remember feeling intimidated by an empty field, but we just started planting. Our design plan was "here's an empty space, lets put a tree here'. I also recall looking at the property after the first few years and thinking we've just got little pimples in a big space. But then came the time when Jane and I had to shout hello to find each other and the satisfaction that gave us.

It's perfect. Don't change a thing about your thought process!

Best regards :-)

Dax

I have a young 6-acre landscape I started planting small seedlings and small grafts 7-years ago. This is my best photo from this year. It's very difficult to photograph trees that are at most 4-7' tall (exception: Taxodium/Metasequoia/Quercus i.e.) This is just a corner shot of probably a few acres.

And looking directly behind, my orchard in progress:

I hope this is not hijacking this thread, but Dax's pictures reminds me of one issue that I wonder how you guys handle. When you mow (and it seems Dax mowes in straight strips), how do you keep the grass out of the plantings? In most home lawns, there's enough yard that you can usually direct the chute away from buildings and plantings. With the "pimple" design (LOL), it makes this problem a lot more significant. One thing that makes it worse, in my case, is that sometimes I am mowing grass over a foot tall. There's only so much time in the day/week/year. Instead of a few grass clippings, it's more like hay.

It's interesting how much Dax's place looks like mine. There are differences, but I see lots of similarities too.

Also @ Dax's place-I think I'm seeing what could be a drainage swale, with attendant Solidagos and perhaps some others. I like that effect greatly.

+oM

Sometimes grass clippings do get on the areas I use herbicide on under each planting. If too much for my liking (it bothers me) I simply drive my mower (zero turn) over those clippings and throw them back onto the turf. Otherwise, the grass clippings turn brown quite quickly and aren't even noticeable a week or so after. Now I'm also mowing once every two weeks as a general rule or even once a week. I probably have 5.5 acres of mowable land and 1/2 an acre of woodland. Going from a non-zero turn mower (7-8 hours of mowing) to now 3.5 is great. I love to mow but that 7-8 hour ordeal got to me eventually and fast at that.

I have several of those drainage swells, three to be exact, and they are tiled to my woodland area which is wet/dry "streams" that follow off to a steep hill where a beautiful stream runs beneath.

Dax

I used to mow using a lawn tractor. It took me about 8 hours and cost approximately $10 in gas, I didn't like the results either - grass got in the beds and the tractor threw clumps of grass. Nuts to this! So I hired a local landscaper and couldn't be more pleased. Two, sometimes three people come with zero turn mowers, weed whackers and blowers. They spend about 1.5 hours and leave a much nicer place. The tree have mulch out to the drip line so I don't have to worry a bout bark damage. It costs about $100, but I think its well worth it.

Now I just use the lawn tractor to pick up leaves this time of year and compost them

Dax,

Your property is beautiful. Imagine what it will be with more plantings and time for more growth.

Lee

you should try sheep.....they only eat grass.....the white house had sheep at one time to keep it everything trimmed.

I know almost nothing about sheep, but a quick Google search led me to more than one site saying that sheep do eat tree vegetation that they can easily reach. One sheep farmer claimed that they even liked to eat the bark off of his trees even with tons of great grazing pasture available to them. Maybe it was the type of sheep? In any case, I don't see me being a shepherd.

I think what I really need is a rear-discharge mower. I have always mowed my "farm" with a 60" zero-turn, but have never tried a rear-discharge model. I'm sure mowing more frequently would also help, but, right now, that's just not an option.

What other issues do you guys run into? Dax, how often do you spray?

Hi Brandon, I have striped ground squirrels that burrow a hole next to at least 33% of my plantings. This doesn't cause harm that I can see but they are burrowing right into/beneath root-systems. Of course deer and rabbits. At some point we all have to say to ourselves that caging has to stop sometime. I've began to limit the number of cages I put around my trees and shrubs on an annual basis. I am wrapping my fruit tree trunks yet to protect from rabbits, deer, and winter sunscald.

I use generic herbicide. I pay about 35 dollars for 2.5 gallons. I do four sprays a year spending 5-6 hours or 7-8 hours each time. I'm using a two-gallon pump sprayer but may invest in a backpack sprayer at some point in time. It takes more than 2.5 gallons so I always end up purchasing a second bottle.

Dax

you could place some fencing around the trees to protect them should the sheep or other grazing animals feed on them.....look into silvopasture

I have seriously thought about putting a deer fence around my whole property. If I was loaded, the fence would already be up, but in real life it may have to wait a while. The deer problem has been a little worse this year than previous years, but a good percentage of all my planted trees are caged.

Besides the deer, I guess voles and groundhogs are the pest-iest animals I have to deal with. I made the mistake of applying groundhog repellent, but that only seemed to be a formal invitation to all groundhogs in a five mile radius. Seriously, the day after the repellent was put down, the groundhog problems increased significantly.

My neighbor used to use his horse to mow the lawn. The horse would do a good job, but if left too long, he would start harming the trees and shrubs. Probably the same with sheep.

My neighbor has been trapping moles for over 40 years in a large lawn which covers a about quarter of his ten acres. He started out with an average of two a week. He's still getting two a week. I don't trap moles on my 10 acres. I don't have a large lawn either, but I've saved a lot of work. Both in mowing and trapping.

It's a matter of making adjustments to conditions.

Mike

Moles are irritating when you have a lawn, but voles and groundhogs are SOOOO much worse. I guess if I had one of those tightly mowed, weed-free lawns, I might hate moles almost as bad. I have tons of moles too, but I don't give them a huge amount of thought/worry. I did grab two moles out of my field the other day and put them in a single cardboard box I happened to have with me. Good grief! Those little things are vicious to each other!

So Lee, what are your plans for your place? Within the next few years, and, after you're gone? In other words, are you doing it just for you while you live there or is there a longer term plan?

Brandon

We enjoy this place and plan to stay and continue maintaining and improving it. However, we are getting along in years and realistically the day will come when we can no longer keep it up. Not soon we trust. And the exercise we get certainly doesn't hurt

We've got a lot of trees and shrubs that are uncommon, some that are rare. It would be nice if the property would generate enough interest to be maintained as a public property. We certainly don't have the wherewithal to insure that.

I suspect the day will come when we'll sell, hopefully to someone who will enjoy it as much as we have.

Lee

In many ways, that's kind of where I am. Even though I hope to have many more years to work with my place, I still am aware that that will change one day. There have been at least three places here in the Knoxville area, that I know of, that at one time held collections of great importance. When the owners died, the collections were either completely lost or significantly degraded (broken up). It hurts to think of how much was lost (time, physical effort, research, and genetic material).

I hope that something "magic" will occur some day and my place will somehow be able to survive. It's not all that much right now, but I have plans for it to be something worth having around for a very long time. I'm not sure how it will, but I guess you could say that I have some degree of faith that something will work out.

Colleges can often be the answer. Turning it over to them in your elder years so you may still enjoy what you created, but so they are involved and can help you maintain it - build labs for student learning - and so forth...

Dax

Unfortunately, that's the very rare solution. Guy's situation (Starhill Arboretum) is an anomaly. They'll take the land and, in certain cases, even keep it up for you while you are living (living trust type of thing), but the property is almost always sold after the death of the original owner. Legal protection for the property could be added, but then the colleges and universities aren't interested unless it's a world-class property with self-funding already in place.

The Garden Conservancy is another possibility, but, like the colleges and universities, they are usually only interested in the best-of-the-best. One good thing about the Garden Conservancy is that funding does not have to already be in place. That would be a plus, but they've set up many properties that weren't self-funding to start with.

I see. Very good, Brandon.

Dax

I wish there were more people interested in this type of thing. It seems to me as though the interest is too spread out in time and space. For instance, in the cases of the properties I mentioned earlier, in this area...I bet the owners would have been thrilled to turn them over to someone willing and capable of continuing the project. But, I guess no one was there to shoulder the task, so the gardens were lost. It also seems that each person interested in this kind of thing is often far from the next person. Dax, you're proximity to Starhill, for instance, is probably a really neat thing. There's just not an equivalent (that I know of) around here. So far, I haven't found or heard of anyone in my area genuinely interested in something like my place, and I don't know of any still-existing project (except mine) around here. The world needs more hortiholics!

Yep, I assume my place will be eventually taken over (lived in or sold) by my only nephew who is 11-years old now. There's no one else in the family chain.

Dax

I'd probably be taking him on tours of gardens and buying him arborist books. (-:

Here are some pix of Ladew Topiary Garden. The owner formed a foundation before he died. It is open to the public and I will have to give the foundation credit, they do a good job under some difficult circumstances. There is also a large manor house, tenant house, stables (now a restaurant), etc.

Property owners with extensive plantings really should give careful thought about what happens to their property when they're gone. What I have seen is when owners die, children have the collection bulldozed and the property subdivided. I have also seen a magnificent conifer collection grow up in weeds and ravaged by deer after the owner died, heirs squabbling.

For this reason I decided many years ago that the only important areas are the natural ones. The ones that were here 10,000 years ago and hopefully will be here centuries into the future. I do my best to protect and preserve the natural areas, the rest is little more than a fleeting memory of someone's vision which may not always be relevant.

True Sam, true.

Now that I've planted this place, I'd of gone with hickory/pecan, oak, walnut - for the majority if I knew what I do now 8-years later. That's also the nut tree person in me speaking.

1/2 of my 6-acres is Hickory Silt Loam so I know what was here. And my two-year plus obsession with pecans/hicans/hickory and an always there semi-obsession with oaks - I would do it differently if I was standing where I am now... those 8-years ago.

Dax