Bryan-College Station, Texas · Wholesale to professional landscapers and re-wholesalers
Wholesale trees for Bryan-College Station landscape contractors
The farm is on FM 2187 outside Sealy, about an hour and a half from College Station: Highway 6 down through Navasota to Hempstead, then over. Close enough to come out between a morning meeting and an afternoon one, walk the rows, and tag the exact trees your plan calls for. About 30,000 container-grown shade and ornamental trees, #30 to #300, wholesale only. What is ready to load today is on the live availability list, open to anyone, no login.
Down Highway 6
Buying trees for a Brazos Valley job without buying them sight unseen
A large-caliper tree is not a commodity, and two trees of the same variety and caliper are not the same tree. From College Station the difference between the two is an hour and a half of Highway 6.
Come out, walk the block, and tag the specific trees going on the job. Approve the quote and those exact trees are held for your ship date, so what arrives on site is what you stood in front of. The availability list says what exists in which sizes before you leave, so the drive is for choosing, not for finding out.
Bring the plan. It is easier to say what will take a claypan while looking at the trees.
Acid sand over a claypan
The trees we grow that are worth planting in Bryan-College Station
Bryan and College Station sit on the Post Oak Savannah: acid sand and sandy loam on the uplands, clay loam in the Brazos bottom, and under all of it a dense claypan that perches water in a wet spring and bakes hard in August. Every other city on this site is alkaline clay or limestone, and the trouble there is chlorosis. Here the ground reads the other way, and so does the list.
- Live Oak Quercus virginiana The Century Tree on campus is one, and the whole of Aggieland plants it. On the sandy uplands it needs no help; in the bottomland clay give it a spot that drains.
- Shumard Red Oak Quercus shumardii Fast, big, red in November, and at home in both the Brazos bottom clay and the claypan under the sand. The large deciduous tree on most Brazos Valley commercial plans.
- Bur Oak Quercus macrocarpa Takes the perched water of a wet spring and the drought of August on the same site, which on a claypan is the whole test. Slow to start, then the biggest shade tree on the list.
- Bald Cypress Taxodium distichum Carter Creek, Lick Creek and the Brazos itself: the bottomland tree. On acid sandy ground it never goes chlorotic the way it can on limestone, so here it can go anywhere there is water.
- Mexican Sycamore Platanus mexicana The Brazos bottom is sycamore ground, and this one is faster and cleaner than the American species in a humid summer. For the big site that needs canopy soon.
- Lacebark Elm Ulmus parvifolia Tolerant of compaction, heat and whatever the soil is, and a street and parking lot standard from here to Dallas.
- Southern Magnolia 'D.D. Blanchard' Magnolia grandiflora 'D.D. Blanchard' Acid sandy loam is magnolia country. On every other page of this site the magnolias are the trees we would send to Houston instead; here they are the trees we would send.
- Southern Magnolia 'Little Gem' Magnolia grandiflora 'Little Gem' The compact magnolia for the courtyard, the entry and the screen, flowering young and often, on soil that finally suits it.
- Wax Myrtle Myrica cerifera A native of exactly this ground: sandy, acid, wet in spring and dry by August. Screens fast and takes a hard shear.
- Yaupon Holly 'Pride of Houston' Ilex vomitoria 'Pride of Houston' The native understory of the Post Oak Savannah, used to the shade of the post oaks and the claypan under them. Evergreen, berried, and indifferent to neglect.
- Roughleaf Dogwood Cornus drummondii A woodland-edge native that takes sun, shade, drought and clay, with white flowers in spring and white berries in late summer. For buffers and naturalistic screens.
- Crape Myrtle 'Natchez' Lagerstroemia 'Natchez' Tall, white, mildew resistant, and happy on acid sand. The crape myrtle for a median or an entry drive.
We grow thirty-two varieties in all, and the rest of them are on the full list. Two of them carry a local endorsement: Vitex 'Shoal Creek' and Crape Myrtle 'Basham's Party Pink' are Texas Superstars, the designation Texas A&M AgriLife gives a plant after it has proved itself across the state, and the program is run from this town. The one that does not belong here is the limestone list. Texas Mountain Laurel, Texas Red Oak, Arizona Cypress 'Blue Ice', Palo Verde 'Desert Museum' and Spanish Dagger want thin alkaline soil, sharp drainage and dry air, and on acid sand over a wet claypan they sulk or rot. They are on the Austin and San Antonio pages for a reason.
Points, not inches
Caliper for College Station site plans, where the points are in what you keep
College Station scores a commercial landscape in points, 30 for every 1,000 square feet of site, and it pays the most for the trees already standing: an existing canopy tree barricaded to its dripline is worth 400 points at 4 to 8 inch caliper and 500 from 8 inches up, and the barricade has to be in place before the first machine moves or the points are forfeit. What the survey does not save, the plan has to plant. We grow from #30 to #300, which runs from about 1.5 inch caliper and 5 feet tall up to 7 to 8 inch caliper at 16 to 18 feet.
Around 800 trees at #100 and larger are in containers here today, more than half of them Live Oak. Container grown above ground means the whole root system comes with the tree, so it establishes faster than a field-dug tree of the same caliper and can go in the ground in most months of the year, which matters when the schedule has to dodge a Brazos Valley spring that leaves the claypan standing in water.
What each container size gets you Container grown or field dug
Delivery
Delivered to Bryan-College Station job sites, or loaded at the farm
Freight is stated on every quote before you bid, so the number you carry into the bid is the number you pay. There is no line that appears later.
We deliver across Brazos County and the towns around it: College Station, Bryan, Navasota, Brenham, Caldwell, Hearne, Madisonville and Huntsville. From the farm it is Highway 6 the whole way up from Hempstead, about an hour and a half. If your own trailer is coming this way anyway, you are welcome to load at the farm instead and keep the freight off the job entirely.
Contract growing
Multi-year Brazos Valley developments, bid on trees that already exist
Texas A&M passed 80,000 students and paused its growth for five years so the town could catch up. The catching up is the work: the RELLIS campus on 1,877 acres west of Bryan, a 19-storey tower at Northgate, and the subdivisions filling in between. It is built in phases, and a phase three that needs two hundred matched Shumards is not something anybody sources in the month it is due.
Contract growing puts your name on specific trees while they are still growing here, at a price agreed at signing, so a job two or three seasons out is bid on trees you can drive down and look at today. About 1,500 trees are growing under contract for one customer right now, so this is a process we run rather than one we describe. The usual terms, including the deposit and the progress payments, are written out on the home page.
Request pricing
Send us the plant list for your Bryan-College Station job
Send the list and we will tell you what we have, what we do not, what will take the claypan, and what it would cost delivered to the site. We sell to professional landscapers and professional re-wholesalers only. If you are a homeowner, your landscaper is welcome to call us.
Build your own quote Request pricing
Or call (210) 736-0146, or email trees@topnotchtreefarm.com. The farm is at 3153 FM 2187 Rd, Sealy, TX 77474, and here are the directions.