Wholesale trees for San Antonio landscape contractors

• Live Oak Quercus virginiana The San Antonio tree, from the missions to every parking lot since. Evergreen, wind firm, and long lived on either soil. On the north side, where oak wilt has done its worst, the question is company and spacing, not whether.
• Texas Live Oak 'Joan Lionetti' Quercus virginiana x fusiformis Live Oak with the escarpment side of the family in it: hardier in a freeze, happier on caliche, and uniform in a row. The Live Oak for a north-side street or a formal entry.
• Mexican White Oak Quercus polymorpha Resistant to oak wilt, quick to establish, and content on alkaline soil, which is why it has become one of the most requested oaks in San Antonio. Holds most of its leaves through a mild winter this far south.
• Chinkapin Oak Quercus muehlenbergii The white oak of the limestone country, so the north side is home ground, and the white oak group is the one oak wilt troubles least. A big shade tree in time, with yellow-brown fall colour.
• Bur Oak Quercus macrocarpa Deep rooted and indifferent to alkaline soil and drought, which on one watering day a week is the point. Slow to start, then the broadest deciduous shade tree we grow.
• Texas Red Oak Quercus buckleyi The red oak that grew up on the Edwards Plateau: it takes caliche that turns a Shumard yellow and gives the north side its colour in late autumn. A red oak, so the pruning calendar applies.
• Lacebark Elm Ulmus parvifolia Heat, compaction and alkaline soil do not bother it, and it is not an oak. Where a street or a parking lot already leans on Live Oak, that is the point.
• Montezuma Cypress Taxodium mucronatum The cypress of the Rio Grande, and San Antonio is about the northern edge of where it keeps its foliage through winter. Faster than Bald Cypress, no knees, and more forgiving of a dry, alkaline site once established. For creeks, detention ponds and big lawns.
• Texas Mountain Laurel Sophora secundiflora San Antonio's own small evergreen, on the limestone it was born on. Slow, which is why it is worth ordering ahead, and the purple flowers smell of grape soda every March.
• Anacua Ehretia anacua Native to Bexar County, and this is where it is at home rather than at the edge of its range. Semi-evergreen, sandpaper leaves, fragrant white flowers in spring, orange fruit the birds strip, and nothing much bothers it in heat or drought.
• Spanish Dagger Yucca treculeana A South Texas native trunked yucca: blue-green blades, a tall white flower spike in spring, and no irrigation requirement at all once it is in. For medians, entries and the parts of a site the sprinklers will never reach.
• Desert Willow 'Sweet Bubba' Chilopsis linearis 'Sweet Bubba' Burgundy-purple flowers all summer on almost no water. The tree for the hottest, rockiest corner of a north-side site, and the one that will not mind Stage 3.

We grow thirty-two varieties in all, and the rest of them are on the full list. South and east of downtown, on the clay, Shumard Red Oak, Mexican Sycamore and Bald Cypress earn their place too. Bald Cypress is the River Walk tree and belongs on water; on an upland caliche site it and the Shumard both go chlorotic, which is when Montezuma Cypress and Texas Red Oak are the better calls.

For the driest ground, Palo Verde 'Desert Museum', Arizona Cypress 'Blue Ice' and Vitex 'Shoal Creek' go where even the list above would want a second watering day, with one caution: a hard freeze cuts the palo verde back. And Southern Magnolia 'D.D. Blanchard', Southern Magnolia 'Little Gem', Wax Myrtle and Podocarpus want deeper, less alkaline ground and more water than San Antonio has. They belong on a Houston job, and we would rather say so here than find out on your site.

The city measures a planted tree six inches above the ground, so the caliper on the quote is the number the arborist's sheet will carry, and a #65 at 3 inches pays back a different amount of mitigation from a #45 at 2. Around 800 trees at #100 and larger are in containers here today, more than half of them Live Oak, and a container-grown tree can go in the ground in most months of the year, which matters when a schedule slides into a Stage 3 August.

What each container size gets you What a container size gives you

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 out 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.

How contract growing works