Tree planting in Austin and Central Texas, from one shade tree in a front yard to a large scale installation, an orchard, or the mitigation planting a construction permit requires. We choose the species for the site, place it, plant it, warranty it, and set up the care that gets it established. There is no minimum, and we plant natives and adapted species.
Species Selection for Tree Planting
Species selection is the decision everything else follows from, and we make it from the site rather than from a list. Soil depth and alkalinity, sun exposure, how much room the mature canopy actually has above ground and below it, whether there is irrigation, what is already competing for the airspace, and what you want the tree to do: shade, screening, or ornament. An ISA Certified Arborist makes the call. Sometimes there is one obvious answer and sometimes there are three worth weighing, and we walk you through the tradeoffs before anything is ordered.
We work in botanical names, because common names routinely cover more than one tree and the two want different things from a site. A redbud that is native to Central Texas and a redbud that needs irrigation to hold on here are sold under the same label. So are two live oaks with different growth habits. Naming the species is how you avoid buying the wrong one, and it is the difference between a recommendation and a guess.
We source from nurseries and inspect the individual tree before it goes in the ground. Nursery quality varies widely: a root flare buried under three inches of container soil, roots already circling the pot, a trunk that has been staked upright its whole life and cannot stand on its own. We look at the tree, not just the tag. And when a species that sells well in Austin is a poor fit for your soil, we say so before you buy it.
Tree Planting Location
Where a tree goes is a separate decision from what it is, and it is the one that is hardest to fix later. We site against mature size rather than nursery size: distance from the house, the driveway, walls and paving, septic fields and irrigation lines, the root zones of trees already on the property, and where the shade will land at the hour of day you care about.
Separation from a fixed object is set per species, because mature spread is a species trait. A screening holly and an escarpment live oak do not get the same setback from a wall, and no single rule of thumb covers both. We give you the number for the tree you are actually planting, on the site it is actually going into.
Depth is part of the placement decision and it is the one thing on this page that is not a judgment call. The root flare goes in at finished grade, per ANSI A300, and not at whatever depth the container soil put it at, which is the failure a buried nursery flare sets up years before anyone sees it. Where a hole has to go near irrigation lines or inside the root zone of a tree that is staying, we can open the ground with an AirSpade running off a truck-mounted compressor instead of steel.
On larger projects we work directly with your design team or landscape architect on locations while the plan is still changeable, which is a great deal easier than moving a tree after it is in.
Tree Planting Season
Deciduous shade trees go in between October 1 and March 1. Evergreens go in between October 1 and May 30, and do especially well planted in spring. Planting in the cool months gives the root system time to move out into the surrounding soil before an Austin summer asks anything of it, which is most of the reason the windows exist.
Those same dates are the ones the planting warranty follows, so timing is not only horticultural here. We do plant outside the windows, which is normal on construction and commercial schedules that do not bend to a planting calendar, and we tell you before it goes in that the tree is going in without a warranty and what the first summer is going to ask of the watering.
Care and Establishment after Tree Planting
A planted tree is not a finished job. The first two years decide whether it makes it, and water is the largest single factor. Every tree we plant leaves with a watering schedule written for that species, that soil and that time of year. The full protocol, including how much and how often, is in how to water a newly planted tree. On sites without irrigation, a newly graded lot, a mitigation planting on a raw site, a hillside install, we can run establishment watering from a truck-mounted sprayer.
We mulch at planting and recommend topping it up each spring and fall while the roots are establishing. A new tree is not pruned in its first two years, and shaping usually starts around the third or fourth year. That work is structural, not cosmetic. Once a tree is established and growing well we recommend excavating the root flare with an AirSpade and pruning away the girdling roots that come with any tree that spent its early life in a container, while that is still a small job.
Fertilization, soil work, and insect and disease treatment for a young tree run through our tree care program. A newly planted tree is a different account than an established one, and it gets a different plan.
Tree Planting Warranty
A tree we plant is warranted for one year, and that extends to three years for as long as the tree stays on our tree care program. If the tree dies inside the warranty, we remove it, buy the replacement and install it. The replacement carries its own warranty from the day it goes in. Consulting fees and pruning are not part of it.
Four things fall outside the warranty, and they are worth knowing before the tree goes in rather than after. Death from a lack of water is the first and by far the most common. The second is herbicide applied near the tree, weed-and-feed on the lawn included. The third is payment not received within thirty days of invoice. The fourth is planting outside the seasonal windows above, which is why we push so hard on timing. If you want a tree planted outside those dates we will still do it, but the warranty does not follow it.
Before we put in a third tree on the same spot we ask for two things: a documented irrigation upgrade, and no chemical weed control anywhere in the yard. Past two failures we stop treating it as a tree problem and start treating it as a site problem, because that is almost always what it is.
Large Scale Installation Projects
One tree in a front yard needs a crew and a shovel. A streetscape, a neighborhood entry, an orchard or a full site install is a different job: dozens or hundreds of holes at a consistent depth and spacing, large stock arriving on a delivery schedule, and root balls that have to cross a finished site without being dropped, dragged or compacted.
We move balled-and-burlapped stock with a Giant G1200 articulating loader, which carries a root ball intact and reaches over landscape work instead of driving through it. Yanmar excavators handle the larger work, including auger-drilled planting holes at production speed and consistent depth across a whole site. A Boxer mini skid steer places trees in the tight spots between beds and hardscape, and the heavy equipment hauls to site on our own flatbed rather than waiting on a rental delivery.
The judgment is in the stock size and the staging. A large-caliber tree gives you the result immediately and asks more of the site and of the watering that follows; smaller stock is easier to establish and takes longer to read as a tree. We size the stock to the site, the access and what you are willing to keep up with afterward, and we say plainly what each choice commits you to.
Tree Planting as Construction Site Mitigation
When a permit carries a mitigation requirement, we prepare and execute the planting that satisfies it. That means species and locations chosen to meet the condition as written and to still make sense on the finished site, planting to the caliber and count set out in the work plan, and the record of it the reviewer expects. The protection, inventory and inspection work that comes earlier in a project is on our construction site services page.
We file permit applications. We do not represent a client at the City. Depending on the jurisdiction, a mitigation obligation may be satisfied with replacement plantings, with a fee in lieu of planting, or with some of each, and which combination is available to you is worth settling before the design is locked. Our consulting arborists work that out with your team.