Corpus Christi, Texas · Wholesale to professional landscapers and re-wholesalers
Wholesale trees for Corpus Christi landscape contractors
The farm is on FM 2187 outside Sealy, about three and a half hours up the coast from Corpus Christi, by 59 and 77 through Victoria and El Campo. Far enough that the availability list should come first and the drive second. 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.
Up 77 and 59
Buying trees for a Coastal Bend job from a farm three hours up the road
A large-caliper tree is not a commodity, and two trees of the same variety and caliper are not the same tree. From Corpus Christi, finding that out in person takes most of a day, so read first and drive second.
The availability list comes from the same records our sales team quotes from, so it says what exists in which sizes before anyone leaves the house. For a big order the day is worth it: walk the block, tag the specific trees, approve the quote, and those exact trees are held for the ship date, so what comes off the truck in Portland is what you stood in front of in Sealy. For a small order, the list and a phone call do most of that work.
Bring the plan, and say how close the site is to the water. That one fact moves half the list.
Water
Trees for a city that just spent eighteen months in Stage 3
From December 2024 Corpus Christi banned all outdoor watering, even from a hand-held hose, with the two western reservoirs together below 20 percent of capacity. It eased to Stage 2 only after a year and a half, which still means one watering day a fortnight. A plant list for the Coastal Bend is a list of trees that can be got into the ground on that and then left alone.
Two things follow. Container grown above ground means the whole root system comes with the tree, which is the difference between a tree that establishes on a fortnightly watering and one that does not, and it is why the planting window here is autumn and winter, so the roots have run before the first dry June. And the species have to be ones that were living on the Coastal Bend's rainfall before anyone irrigated anything, which most of the list below were.
The city has bought itself time, with new supply, with households cutting from 6,000 to 4,500 gallons a month, and with a wet spring that pushed the projected emergency out to 2028. Nobody on a job site should plan as if the restrictions will not be back.
Salt and wind
The trees we grow that are worth planting in Corpus Christi
The Coastal Bend is alkaline clay, a steady onshore wind, salt spray that carries blocks back from the bays, and a coast that gets hurricanes: Harvey came ashore at Rockport in 2017. It is also zone 10a, the warmest city on this site, so the cold filter the northern pages carry does not apply, and the South Texas trees are all in. These are the ones on our list built for it.
- Live Oak Quercus virginiana The Coastal Bend's tree, and the one that proves it: the Big Tree at Goose Island is a Live Oak and it came through Harvey's landfall. Evergreen, wind firm, salt tolerant, and long lived on the coastal clay.
- Anacua Ehretia anacua Native here, salt tolerant, and at home in the heat. Semi-evergreen, sandpaper leaves, fragrant white flowers in spring and orange fruit the birds strip. The small shade tree for a bayside site.
- Texas Mountain Laurel Sophora secundiflora Takes the alkaline clay, the drought and a fair amount of salt, and nothing about a Corpus Christi winter will bother it. Evergreen, slow, purple in March.
- Mexican White Oak Quercus polymorpha The oak wilt answer further north is simply a good oak here: fast to establish, at home on alkaline soil, and warm enough this far south to hold most of its leaves all winter.
- Chinkapin Oak Quercus muehlenbergii On the Coastal Bend's own list of salt-tolerant natives, and unbothered by the alkaline clay. A big white oak in time, with yellow-brown fall colour.
- Bur Oak Quercus macrocarpa Also on the salt-tolerant list, deep rooted, and indifferent to drought once established. The long-lived deciduous shade tree for a park or a campus with room.
- Montezuma Cypress Taxodium mucronatum Fully evergreen this far south, faster than Bald Cypress, no knees, and it takes an alkaline, dry site once its roots are down. For the few wet spots, the detention ponds and the big lawns.
- Wax Myrtle Myrica cerifera The chenier woodlands on the coastal sand are Wax Myrtle and Yaupon. Salt air, wet feet, drought: it has met all three before. Screens fast.
- Yaupon Holly 'Pride of Houston' Ilex vomitoria 'Pride of Houston' The other half of the chenier woodland, and a native evergreen that tolerates salt, shade, drought and poor soil. Berries all winter.
- Spanish Dagger Yucca treculeana A South Texas native yucca that asks for nothing once it is in the ground, which during eighteen months of Stage 3 was the whole specification.
- Palo Verde 'Desert Museum' Parkinsonia x 'Desert Museum' Fast, green barked, yellow in spring, and the freeze that cuts it back in Austin does not come here. For the hottest, driest ground on the site.
- Desert Willow 'Sweet Bubba' Chilopsis linearis 'Sweet Bubba' Burgundy flowers all summer on no water at all. The tree for the median, the parking island and the corner the irrigation never reached.
We grow thirty-two varieties in all, and the rest of them are on the full list. A few more are fine a mile or two back from the water, where the spray does not reach: Shumard Red Oak, Lacebark Elm, Crape Myrtle 'Natchez', Crape Myrtle 'Muskogee' and Bald Cypress all do well on the inland side of town, the Bald Cypress on fresh water only. And some we would not send at all. Southern Magnolia 'D.D. Blanchard', Southern Magnolia 'Little Gem', Podocarpus and Arizona Cypress 'Blue Ice' do not like salt, the magnolias and the Podocarpus go chlorotic on the alkaline coastal clay, and the cypress rots in the humidity. They belong on the Brazos Valley page, where the ground is acid and the air is dry enough.
Sizes
Caliper for Corpus Christi commercial work
The city's landscape code credits street-yard and landscape trees on a commercial site and asks for a replacement when a credited tree comes out, so the trees on the plan are counted trees. 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.
On the coast there is a case for the middle of that range rather than the top. A #65 Live Oak at 3 to 3.5 inches establishes faster than a #200 at 5 to 6, needs less water to do it, and in a Coastal Bend wind it stands up straighter sooner, because it is anchoring a smaller sail. Around 800 trees at #100 and larger are in containers here today, more than half of them Live Oak, for the sites that need the size on day one.
What each container size gets you What a container size gives you
Delivery
Delivered to Coastal Bend 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 Nueces and San Patricio counties and the coast either side: Corpus Christi, Portland, Gregory, Ingleside, Rockport, Port Aransas, Robstown, Sinton, Kingsville and Alice. Three and a half hours each way is where freight starts to matter, and it matters less per tree the fuller the truck, so a Coastal Bend order is at its best as a full load or as two jobs on one truck. If your own trailer is coming north anyway, you are welcome to load at the farm instead.
Contract growing
Multi-year Coastal Bend projects, bid on trees that already exist
San Patricio County has taken more than 35 billion dollars of industrial construction in five years: the steel mill at Sinton, the ExxonMobil and SABIC plant at Gregory, the lithium refinery going up near Robstown. Every one of them comes with acres of landscape plan, in phases, and a phase three that needs two hundred matched Live Oaks 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 up 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 Corpus Christi job
Send the list, tell us how far the site is from the water, and we will tell you what we have, what we do not, what will take the salt, and what it would cost delivered. 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.