Wagmore Farm: The Bloody Great Forest Begins to Take Shape

My last few blog posts I've talked about the need to create a Bloody Great Forest on one edge of our property.  I made the plan, I found trees, and now….  The Great Forest is taking shape.

A couple weeks ago The Husband spent a long (rainy) weekend at Wagmore, working with a crew to put 146(!) trees along the fence line.

Here's the story in pictures:

The First step was to clear part of the fence line. 

Apparently, the crew cleared this out really quickly. 

Which makes all the time I've spent clearing brush on the property seem like a silly pastime.

As an added bonus, I can do some burning next time I'm at Wagmore!

If anyone wants to come over for S'mores, I'll give you a call…

The first shipment of trees arrived.

These are the Excelsa cedars for the fence line screen.

Once the line was cleared, the hole digging began.  

The Husband and his post hole digger couldn't keep up with the trained crew.

It was a rainy day, so digging was a little sloppy, but the trees were well watered in.

Then the crew got to work putting the trees in.

The crew was vital to getting this done, we could NOT have done it on our own in a reasonable time frame.

The Husband used the tractor to move trees into place.

Here's a shot of the line of Excelsas all in place.  

But our Great Forest is not just Excelsas.

We've added other layers of trees to select areas, in anticipation of blocking site-lines.

The trees in front are Green Giants - another fast-growing evergreen. 

In other areas, we added even more depth.  

Here we have Incense Cedars, too.

Here's an "in The Great Forest" view.  

I'm so happy we were able to get such large trees for such a good price.

And I can't wait for them to grow!

We even added more trees to the screen we planted earlier.

This will help to build a more dense forest with a nice diversity of evergreen trees.

This one's a Deodar Cedar.  

It grows to be a tree with a lovely shape and a lot of appeal, 

so we planted them on the side of The Great Forest nearest the house.

And my favorite picture.

I think Mother Nature approves of the beginning of The Great Forest, too.

I'm so thankful that The Husband was able to get all this work done.  Thanks, too, to My Dad and My Brother for helping out during the weekend.  I feel a sense of relief and purpose that we're doing SOMETHING in advance of the potential Monstrosity next door.

Wagmore Farm: How We Found Cheap Trees

In the last post, I talked about the trees we plan to plant in The Bloody Great Forest.  Since we need to find and plant more than 300 trees, and my last name isn’t Gates or Buffett, finding inexpensive sources of trees was paramount. 

I started with one of the helpful tree people who helped me evaluate options for the screen.  His business is based North of Seattle.  If you need trees and live up that way,  I highly recommend contacting him.  Unfortunately, the shipping would have been prohibitively high given the number of trees I need, so I had to find trees in and around Wagmore.  One would think that would be easy (it is in the Evergreen State afterall), but it took me a surprising long time…

All the trees we’re planting this time around I find via Craigslist.  I love Craigslist.  I found one grower and one large nursery who, together, provided us with nearly 150 trees.  Cheap.  Apparently one can get good deals on trees in the middle of winter.  Go figure.  We ended up paying between $25-$50 for 5' - 8' trees.  I am very happy with this!

The Husband is working on getting these trees in the ground.  I'll share more of his adventures in tree planting in the next few days, once I get an update.  In the spring, we'll stand back and take a look at the overall screen and try to imagine how it will look from the house.  I want to make sure we have a natural forest look from the house, backed by a thick-you-can't-see-anything-through-it screen.  This might mean buying more larger trees from the nurseries we've already worked with.

If our screen is in good shape, we'll likely fill in the rest of the forest with trees from the county foresters association seedling sale (the same place we got the our first lot of baby trees).  The babies require more tending for a few years, but they're a heck of a lot cheaper, and it's fun to watch them grow…

Here's an image my nephew created for me.  

It captures the impenetrable forest feel perfectly.

If I can't have Ents maybe I can have Flying Monkeys?

Wagmore Farm: Trees! Bring Me Trees!

In my earlier post, I shared the reason I suddenly want to forest a good portion of Wagmore.  Once the decision to plant The Bloody Great Forest was made I entered what I shall now call "The Great Tree Quest."

The stuff to figure out includes:
1- What kind of trees work best for our needs
2 - Where to get affordable trees
3 - How to convince The Husband and My Dad to get the trees in the ground.

Step 1 - What Trees to Choose?

Clearly, a key decision.  We need trees that do well in the climate, grow quickly, remain full year round, and will grow together as a screen.

I, of course, started on the internet by searching for screen tree ideas.  Once I had enough information to be dangerous, I started to talk to people.  I learned that tree people really like to talk about trees (which is both unsurprising and lucky for me), that cedar trees make a great screen, and that cedar trees really like it in my part of Washington State (lucky me, again!).

One of these very helpful tree people has a very helpful website, with a great guide to screen trees.  This helped me decide that the Excelsa Cedar is the best screen tree for Wagmore.  We'll be putting these trees 6' off the fence line, spaced around 8' apart.  When the trees are mature they'll be very full and 30'-35' tall.  They also grow at about 2' a year once established, which will help us get a big screen quickly.

Since no Great Forest is made of just one type of tree, the second layer of trees will include Port Orford Cedars (which can reach 100' tall), Incense Cedars, and maybe some Western Red Cedars.  We'll place these in a second line, close together, and close to the other line of trees - to make our first line of defense very thick.

My goal is to create a dense, imposing forest.  Think Fangorn Forest from Lord of the Rings.  And I'd love some Ents, too.  But I realize that I'll likely have to settle for Corgis and Guinea Fowl as forest protection.

I want my screen to be this thick - and cedars will stay more full than these!

(many thanks to xedos4 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net for use of the photo)

The next layers of trees will include Deodar Cedars, Hemlock, and various other evergreen and deciduous trees to make the Great Forest look natural.  Most of this layer of trees will be added in the spring - with more baby trees from the County seedling sale.

Overall, we anticipate adding 300+ more trees to Wagmore.  That's a lot of trees, so I'm continuing my quest to find them cheaply and get them in the ground.  More on that next time!

Wagmore Farm: "Forever" Homes for the Baby Trees

You might remember from a previous post that The Husband and I, with lots of help from my Dad, bought 40+ baby trees from a local forester's sale to make up for some of the trees we had to get rid of when we bought the house.

We bought them and put them in the "tree nursery" in spring of 2012.

The baby trees - summer of '12

When we went out this spring, we noticed that the babies were really starting to grow.  Starting to grow so much, in fact, that we really needed to move them.

A couple trees didn't make it, but we were left with a great selection of western red cedar, incense cedar, deodar cedar, hemlock, and 3 giant sequoia.

The baby trees - fall '13

Oh what a difference a year makes!

To minimize the amount of watering we'd have to do, we chose to wait until the fall to move them.  Since the land is in the Pacific Northwest, we figured Mother Nature would take over the watering soon enough.


First on our list was to plan where the babies would go.  While I knew the general areas for all the trees, I wanted our trees to look like a forest -- not like lines of screen trees -- so I took care to place each tree individually.  This involved figuring out how far apart each type of tree needed to be, deciding how to make things look as natural as possible, then measuring (algebra used!), and flagging where each tree went.

Here's the rest of the story - in pictures:

First, we mowed the areas where the trees were to be planted.

This is the largest area - along our side fence line.

The Husband dug up each of the trees.

You can really see how big they've become when a person is next to them!

We were smart enough to buy a post hole digger for the tractor,

so at least that part was easy...

Our first couple trees in their "forever" homes.

30 more trees went along this line.

This is the last tree in the line.

We put newspaper around each base, and finished it off with mulch.

Hopefully that will keep the weeds down a bit.

We also soaked all of them in using 

a root builder fertilizer recommended by our local nursery.

Grow babies, grow!

We put a few of the trees out near the road, 

so we'll have a nice view of them from the house.

The last few trees went in the area SE of the house -- adding some evergreens to the deciduous trees already in the "forest" area.

I can't wait to watch them fill in!

More Trees for Wagmore!

I love trees.   When we bought Wagmore, the property had some great trees.  Unfortunately, many of these great trees were planted very close to the house.  Big trees close to the house = bad.  Still, it was hard for The Husband and I when we had to take down those trees.

Then  My Dad mentioned to me that the Washington state foresters association has a seedling sale every year.  I was in!  I placed my order with My Dad, and sent him some cash.   Apparently, the seedling sale is rather like Black Friday deals, with seedlings going fast, so My Dad went early in the morning, and was one of the first in line.

All the trees I wanted were available, so we ended up with 42 baby trees.  I only ordered 40, but since we were buying so many, they threw in 2 extras.  So nice!  My Dad came home with 3 different types of cedars, fir trees, hemlocks, 2 ginkos, and 3 giant sequoias.

Since the trees were tiny, My Dad planted them on the property, in the area that was formerly the garden, and watered them over the summer when things got too dry.  (HUGE thanks to My Dad for all he's done for our baby trees!)

The Tree Nursery.  Hello, babies!

Hemlock.

These are the smallest of all the baby trees.

Cedar - can't remember which type.

Baby fir tree.  

Now that the baby trees are starting to grow, it's time to think about where we'll put them.  Our plan is to put them in their permanent homes in late-April or May.

I spent some time yesterday thinking about the property, and learning about what type of environment each of the babies like.

Here's my draft tree plan:

The screen trees will be 2 of the types of cedars (deodar and incense) plus some older, fast-growing trees that we'll buy from a nursery and mix in.  I want the screens to look natural, not just a long line of trees.

The choice of the screen location in the front of the property is to screen a rather junky barn, bus(?), etc. that our neighbors have.

On the side of the property the screen will be "preemptive."  The next door 20 acres is for sale.  Right now zoned for one house, but you never know.

In the back of the property the screen will be used to block the view of a giant house on the property behind ours.

The other trees will be used to fill in an area that already has some trees.  I want it to be more of a forest  -- with room for a galloping lane running through it, of course.

Here's a view of the forest as it is now.  

All deciduous trees, and needs to be thicker to be

a real NW forest.

I'll do a post when we do our planting.  Oh, and if any of you in the SWWA area want to help, just let me know!