When placing an order for trees to be supplied at a future time, it is important that customers carefully consider the date when they expect the plants will be needed for planting. A number of decisions are based on that ‘nominated date’ and a number of outcomes depend on the accuracy or otherwise of that date.

• Our forward estimates of plant size and cost are based on that date.
• If, the plants need to be taken earlier and the trees are not to the projected size, discounts could apply.
• Perhaps most importantly, it is very often the case that delivery is deferred beyond the nominated date and the trees have already reached their projected size.  In those circumstances important arrangements that provide for the ongoing good management of the plants pending delivery must be in place to ensure that the trees continue to comply with Australian Standard AS 2303 and meet customers’ rightful expectations.

Young trees are living organisms which continue to grow as time passes. There is universal recognition that if a tree’s growth is interrupted or constrained because it has outgrown its container then its health and vigour will deteriorate and its structural integrity can be seriously compromised. This has negative implications for the planting project and all involved.  

This all means that when trees in the nursery approach maximum physical size for their containers they need to be ‘potted up’.

Potting up involves moving the trees to bigger containers in which they are then held and managed until the root systems occupy the new container volume and the trees achieve a physical size appropriate for those new containers. This period will vary according to season, species and management but it will normally be some months.

Because project delays are commonplace, trees frequently begin to outgrow their containers during delay periods. At Trees Impact our policy is to address that possibility by establishing, at the outset, management procedures to be activated if:

• trees are to size;
• delivery has been deferred; and
• those trees are or later become in need of bigger containers in which to grow.

In our ‘Conditions of Quotation/Supply’, which govern all sales transactions, Conditions 7 & 8 regulate arrangements to apply between the Customer and the Supplier when delivery is delayed.