Choosing where your tree will finally stand

A young tree arrives in a pot you can carry with one hand. That is the problem. Everything about the first year invites you to answer the easy question — where shall I put this? — and leave the hard one for later. The hard one is where it will stand when it has finished growing, and it is worth sitting with now, while the answer is cheap to change.

Start at the far end

Work backwards from the mature tree, not forwards from the pot. An English oak has the potential to reach 20 to 40 metres with a crown to match. A silver birch can reach 30 metres, and a light canopy does not make it a small tree. A Scots pine can reach 35 metres. Those are species potentials rather than promises about the sapling on your doorstep — but they are the right numbers to plan against, because planning against the sapling is how people end up removing a thirty-year-old tree.

Flowering cherries are the exception, in that eventual size depends entirely on the cultivar. The specific variety and its expected size are agreed before dispatch, so plan around the figure you are given rather than around cherry trees in general.

Four things to check before you commit

Distance from buildings and boundaries. The rule of thumb people reach for is “plant no closer than the mature height” — useful, but not a law of nature. What matters is the combination of soil, species and structure. Shrinkable clay soils are the ones to take seriously: on clay, trees near a building can be a factor in subsidence, which is why an arboriculturist or a structural engineer is worth a conversation if you are within a few metres of a house, wall, garage or drive. Close to a boundary, remember that the tree will be your neighbour’s tree too, and that in England and Wales a neighbour is generally entitled to cut back growth crossing the boundary line. A tree in the wrong place does not become right over time; it becomes a dispute.

What is buried underneath. Drains, water mains, gas, electricity, broadband. Roots follow moisture and will find a cracked drain run. Utility companies and your local authority can tell you what is in the ground near your property, and many supply plans free on request. Ten minutes of asking now is cheaper than an excavator later.

What is overhead. Look up, then look up again in your mind’s eye at forty metres. Power and telephone lines are the obvious ones. Eaves, gutters, dormer windows and next door’s roof are the ones people forget, because at planting height they are nowhere near the tree.

Light, soil and water. Most of our collection wants an open outdoor position, and open means open — not a courtyard with three walls, not the gap between two houses. Check drainage honestly: if a hole you dig fills with water and stays full, that is information. And think about the shade you will create as much as the shade you have: a mature canopy changes the garden around it, including the parts that are not yours.

Whose permission you actually need

This is the part people skip, and it is the part that decides whether the tree has a future.

If you own the freehold of the land outright, check your deeds anyway. Restrictive covenants on planting, on sight lines and on boundary treatments are not rare, particularly on newer estates.

If you rent, ask your landlord in writing and keep the reply. A tree is not a houseplant; planting one is a permanent alteration to their property, and a verbal “sure, fine” from a letting agent three tenancies ago protects nobody.

If you are leasehold, check the lease and ask the freeholder. If the ground is shared — a communal garden, a green in front of a block, a verge, an allotment, a churchyard, a field belonging to somebody who is happy for you to walk across it — you need the landowner’s written permission, and you need it before the tree goes in rather than after somebody notices.

If the site is in a conservation area or the tree will one day sit near protected trees, your local authority planning department is the right first call. Protection regimes mostly govern what happens to existing trees, but the council can tell you what applies to your particular site, and their answer is worth more than a general article.

Staying in a pot is a legitimate answer

Nothing about this model requires you to put the tree in the ground this year, or at all. A container is a real stage, not a waiting room: plenty of owners keep a tree potted for years, repotting as it needs it, and make the permanent decision when life is settled enough to make it properly. A tree grown well in a pot and planted at fifteen years old is in a far better position than a tree planted badly at one.

It does mean the container becomes the thing you look after: watering, drainage, and repotting when the roots tell you to rather than when the calendar does.

Write the decision down

Whatever you decide, put it in the tree’s record: the place, the access, how it is growing and when it was planted. This is the one part of the site that exists precisely because the decision outlives the conversation. The person who inherits the responsibility for this tree may never have met you. They will want to know where it is, how to reach it, whether the land is yours, who to ask, and what you had in mind.

A tree is the rare purchase where the second owner matters more than the first. Choose the site as though you are writing them a note. In effect, you are.

General species references: Woodland Trust A–Z of British trees. Nothing here is legal, structural or arboricultural advice for your particular site — for that, ask someone who can come and look at it.