Trees, Trees, Trees Bare root trees arrive in less than a month on a refrigerated truck. They will come from Oregon, Illinois and Minnesota.  They will be dormant, light as a feather, with no soil and no pot to hold them.  And they will be inexpensive, at their lowest price of the year.  

Time to put the thinking/planning caps on. 

Trees don’t just “grow on trees”  — they are trees.  Things grow on them.  And the only way they become trees is after someone puts the time in, thinks about their yard, their hopes for the future, the legacy and beauty they want to  create and leave behind.   A legacy that adds tremendous value to your biggest asset and investment:  your primary residence.

The bare root order form can be found here.

But the desire to do the work has to be found elsewhere, inside of you.

Couple of notes:  Mulberry Trees.  We have @ 20 of them.  And, they are seriously hard to find.  Beautiful, tall spreading trees, truly brown bark and branches, with prodigious red/black berries that are delicious and litter the driveways of my mind.  People put out sheets to catch the berries, and you may have to to beat other critters to them.  An old-timey favorite, back when the second biggest source of wine in the United States was from mulberries.  Small enough at 2′ with limited branching, but also a great price at $35 each.

Good selection of fruit trees in 2025, including for the first time:  a peach tree. Contender.  Rated at Zone 5 but being successfully cultivated in Zone 4 B in Wisconsin when in a protected spot.  Read up on it yourself; this tree is not for the feint of heart.  But seriously, peaches in northwest Wisconsin feels kind of sexy right now.

Prices are up again in 2025.  Trees are not immune to the forces of nature, the costs of labor, and the reach of a hungry marketplace.  I can’t recommend it highly enough:  plant trees early and often.  They take so long to grow, so long to become that awesome anchor in a yard, or in a family — there in the old photo, the thing most remembered.  And next year, prices will go up again, and the year after that.  If you think about it, not only will trees be more expensive in the future, they will be even more expensive in terms of a lost opportunity of not having them in and growing already.   Pay more and end up with less by waiting into the future. If only you had planted them years ago, when they were less expensive and growing bigger every year.  

Waiting, putting it off, is a losing proposition when it comes to trees.  Last year, Dragonfly sold in the range of 800 trees.  If you were not among that group, the regrets must be palpable.

The bare root sale opens around April 20th (weather dependent).  If you can’t get five trees into the budget, but you have some must-have favorites, plan to come to the sale EARLY in order to get your variety and best specimens.  Some things sell out fast, and certainly, top specimens go to the early birds.  And, don’t go to sleep on the shrubs, witch hazel, hyacinths, rhododendron, serviceberry, snowballs — there will be varieties of interest available early.

Looks to be an early spring.  Cold came in the right months this winter.  All signs are pointing to green up and a long growing season. Get the jump on what could be a great year to plant.