There's a tree guy near me who has a side specialization in Japanese maples. Seems like a nice niche. I think he purchased a bunch of small grafted cultivars and planted them on his property, letting them grow to size. He'll fork lift them up and plant them for clients in the dormant season. Not uncommon, I take it, to charge $1,000 or more per installation. To avoid wet feet and root rot in our clay soils, I understand he often doesn't even dig a whole--just planting the trees them right on top of the ground, staking the tree and bringing soil to cover up the roots. Overwatering and planting too deeply can be a problem where I'm at. (If irrigating, note the difference between "pipe thread" and "hose thread.")
I'm thinking of having on hand, or growing, a half-dozen or so native tree species that I can recommend and that are not easily found in the neighborhood plantings and retail nurseries: maybe bald cypress, yellow wood, black gum, post oak, American beech, a nice American holly cultivar, chalk maple. Maybe the nursery/landscaping side of tree work will be another way of keeping my ground crew occupied when I'm not dismantling trees for them. There's a lot of work, much of which can be done on wet days: clearing land, putting up deer fencing, laying out irrigation, potting and repotting trees, and making seedling beds out of the mountains of decomposed wood chips we've been gathering. Someday I'd love to have a greenhouse, a tree field, and big tree spade.
