F-lard,

Being basically a cheap (ah, make that frugal) person, I've never paid someone to plant for me. Still, this seems a bit exorbitant, especially for trees that are so readily available. This is pure speculation, but seems to me you should be able to find a reputable landscaper willing to do the job for $1000 or less (labor and trees). The trees may not be quite as big, but will establish quicker and catch up in a year or two. I'm also skeptical of any organization that would include Callery Pear and Norway Maple in their "Gold Standard" package.

My .02

Bob

All I saw on their site was the illinois pride package and that sounded reasonable for delivery and installation included. I'm not able to see the rest of their site because a lot of it is in flash and haven't made their site accessible to people who don't like watching bandwidth-hoarding video ads and cheesy intro pages. Steer clear of flowering pears and norway maples they are real junky trees. And you can do better than autumn blaze too, any red maple or sugar maple but do your homework first.

are you saying its 1470$ plus 300$ per tree to install ... or another 1500$ .. for a total of 2970????

yikes .....

i might drive out from Adrian MI and do it for you myself ...

i read the fine print to say installation is included ....

regardless ..... trees half the size ... will probably be 1/4 the cost .. and 5 years after planting be as big as larger planted stock initially .... as noted previously ... they take the transplant easier.. and re-establish faster ... and take a smaller investment all around .... i would go smaller ...

the best time to do this is in fall with cooler nights .. so shopping now for installation in fall is the thing to do ... any way you do it.. insist on a full guarantee ...

good luck .... ken

The Illinois Pride package is certainly a better selection of trees, in my opinion. Flowering pears and norway maples are just not the best choices any more ... despite how popular they are. Your average person just does not realize the negative aspects of these trees, they are just interested in "flowers" and "fast growing". Fast growing often has it's price - weak wood.

Helping people to make more informed choices would be a good service to provide, not just offering them the stuff they can get anywhere ... trees that they will likely regret having years down the road.

I wish you luck, Chris.

Most of the remaining over-planted Bradford pears of the 90s in our location are really ugly now. They stink when they flower, they break up into horrible and sad looking shapes way too soon, and they have been way over planted. In the southern midwest states, the once oh so popular, Bradford pears have fallen way out of favor, starting at least 4-5 years ago.

Norway maples. Weak wood, litters the ground with broken limbs and twigs, massive amounts of their winged seeds land in the lawns, all the landscape beds, and even gutters. Then even worse those winged seeds usually sprout at abundant rates.

I must admit, though, that compared with the Bradford pears, the Aristocrat, and Cleveland cultivar flowering pears have performed much better in our area. I have also seen a different advertised Cultivar of Bradford pear which the grower claimed produced stronger crotches and much less structual limb failure incidents. Not, certain what the new Bradford sport or whatever type cultivar that supposed improved tree is called.

Katrina1,

You are right there have been significant problems with the Bradford pear. They do not grow well in out zone, and have horrible problems with short life spans and branch breakage. I do not sell Bradford for this very reason. We offer Aristocrat, Cleveland, Trinity, Stonehill, and Autumn Blaze Pear. Aristocrat is definitely the most popular with Cleveland being a close second. These cultivars of Pear are much improved, and don't suffer from the same problems as the Bradford. Norway Maples have been planted very heavily, and there seems to be alot of negative hype surrounding them. They are not the cleanest tree, and they certainly aren't as nice as a Sugar Maple, but that doesn't mean they aren't what some people are looking for. They are much cheaper, they grow fast, and they provide nice, dense shade. This is what a lot of people are looking for, I get asked for them constantly, and that is why they are in my packages.

Many of my customers ask me to suggest trees, help them make decisions, or design their yard. I make them fully aware of the benefits of one tree over another tree- and I always help them make informed choices. I offer a large range of high quality trees, which grow and thrive in the Chicagoland area. I appreciate the last few comments, as they seem to be well informed and genuinely helpful, I also appreciate the suggestions as a new business I really will take this advice and feedback to heart when moving my business forward.

Thanks

Chris,

I do apologize if I inapproprately posted a link to your website here. I felt the opinons here would help me decide on what to do with trees in my yard

I do have one idea. Maybe you can create a new package for gardenweb users. Follow the suggestions of the users here.. create a new package with recommended trees (trees that are highly valued as well has not the garden variety ones you find in homedepot or lowes). Since this website is heavily visited by tree lovers, maybe a discount on top of that as well.. from there the word of mouth spread through here will help grow your business.

Chris,

Hats off to you for your consideration and willingness to respond without being defensive. Sounds to me like you're an entrepreneur, with the goal being to build a business and make money doing something (selling a product) you love. This is just my opinion (and you know what they say about these), but it seems to me you've taken a short-term approach to growing your business. While it might be OK to have a "fast growth" or "quick shade" package, I think a better strategy would be to have as many high quality trees as possible in the "packages." It could be fun to see what packages posters come up with and what they'll name it. One more suggestion: for your Illinois package, how 'bout only having trees native to the Land of Lincoln?

In the long run, quality wins out.

Bob

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I definitely felt like I needed to respond, I am always interested to get feedback. This is a new business (I just started up this Spring) and business has been fantastic so far- but I think Bob had a great idea. I think it would be a really cool idea to have people put together what their idea of a favorite tree package is. So lets do it, I will give everyone and anyone a chance to be the designer here and come up with their own pre-arranged tree package. The package should follow some sort of theme and have ideally 4-8 trees in it. Keep in mind marketability and the such for homeowners that maybe aren't necessarily tree experts and want to balance value, beauty, practicality, and cost. Also, the trees have to stay fairly mainstream (nothing extremely exotic), my main wholesale supplier has a great selection but I can't be running around Illinois collecting designer specimen trees- not cost effective for me or the consumer. More often than not a customer would gladly substitute a Sugar Maple (or any other luxury tree) for a more reasonably priced one. There is a bigger cost difference on the whole sale level then you might guess. Also, in the homeowner market slow growing trees are a very tough sell.

When I came up with the tree package idea I thought it was a neat idea (anyone familiar with the suburban sprawl around Chicago understands the need for a service like mine). There is a huge market of new homeowners and homeowners in suburban areas that haven't gotten their landscaping done yet or are looking for that "big change" that a yard full of trees can give them. So far nearly all of my business has been custom orders (ie people designing their own packages), I feel the need to reiterate that my trees are extremely high quality. While some may find some species of tree less desirable than others, in the end it is what the customer wants... and what the customer wants, I will provide them with. I still maintain that the new varieties of Ornamental Pear are extremely wonderful trees, and Norway Maples, while not everyones favorite, is a nice tree nonetheless that is highly demanded.

Bob, I originally had an all native package- but I worried about having too many packages. I do not want to distract with too many options, I am currently working on a way for people to arrange and buy their own custom package orders online.

I would like to hear everyones packages ideas, and if one really catches my eye I mean even use it!

Thanks.

Chris