Before becoming CEO of The Tree Office, Gustav
worked in the Swedish nursery industry. He's
noticed that each year, the nursery stock sizes being
planted in Sweden keep getting bigger. Planting
pits are prepared for large trees and the larger
caliper trees often require three seasons of irriga-
tion or even more before being fully established.
The large trees are almost always balled-and-bur-
lapped or container grown—never bare root—which
makes transplanting complicated and expensive.
During our exchange we saw almost the oppo-
site happening in the U.S. Smaller caliper trees
are planted with not too much need for irrigation
or management during the establishment period.
Tree plantings are therefore a lot less expensive in
the U.S. than in Sweden, and during these times
of urgent need for climate adaptation, we need to
keep the costs low so we can plant as many trees
as possible. The exchange highlighted why these
personal interactions are so important. In talking
to managers and on-the-ground staff, and in seeing
the plantings, the logic in using smaller caliper sizes
and in planting bare-root trees was obvious to us.
At our visit to the Casey Trees Tree Farm but also
to NYC Parks, we learned that there is quite a
big difference in nursery stock quality when you
compare Sweden to the U.S. In Sweden we have a
widely used national nursery stock standard, and
expectations on tree quality are high. What we
saw in the U.S. was a bigger range in quality, with
much less structural pruning being done in nurs-
eries compared to Sweden. Differences in nursery
production triggered a lot of interesting discus-
sions around soil, transplanting, harvesting time,
structural pruning, and much more. During the
conversations it was clear that Gustav was in his
right element! We are looking forward to being
able to invite representatives from the U.S. nursery
industry as well as nursery clients to Sweden and
Europe to look at our nursery standards. >>
Gustav Nässlander together with Gabriela Amaya-Williams
(left) and Elliot Weidow (right) from Baltimore Tree Trust.
Big is not always better—and other nursery
production considerations
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