Our farm, Highland Hill Farm, is located in solid clay in Doylestown Pa.. We therefore like plants that grow well in dense, heavy, rather impermeable, NOT well-drained soils. One of the arborvitae, the Green Giant, the Western Redcedar Tree, or botanically, the Thuja Plicata, is our favorite. Here is why:



The hardiness zone the Green Giant Arborvita tolerates is from zone 5 to zone 8. That's where extreme cold temperatures get down to a temperate level of about 15 or 20 degrees in the winter (Zone 8), but also as low as a frigid level of 15 or 20 degrees BELOW zero (zone 5). Green giants are evergreens, being cedars. Their rapid growth rates can in ideal conditions reach 3 feet per year. Site requirements for the Green Giant Arborvita are sun to partial shade, moist well drained soil preferred (but still does well in clay), and protection from wind, at lest when young.

The Green Giant is a beautiful tree. It has an aesthetically fine form. It's conical, being narrow to broadly pyramidal, reaching from 50 feet to 80 feet in height in southeastyern Pennsylvania. The width at the base of the cone is usually about 15 feet to 20 feet. The leaves are rich green making graceful foliage.

Green Giants make a superb privacy screen. They keep their foliage color year 'round, great for brightening bleak gray winter days with snow on the ground. The cinnamon bright red bark when young turn rich russet brown with time crating a strong contrast with the needle leaves.

Green Giants' flowers, their fruit are pretty little light brown half-inch female cones. (Just so you know, Green giants are females, so its okay to call the cones pretty.) The Green Giant is also a wonderful shade tree, casting a dark, dense shade. The wood is strong too, once the tree is beyond its youth.

This is an arborvita that should outlive even your grandchildren. There are Green Giants out west documented to be over 300 years old. Just don't plant these too close to the ocean, or roads in areas where there's a lot of salt used for snow removal. If you get over 100 inches of snowfall and more per year, no roadside Arborvita planting where salt is used, PLEASE. The greatest soldier of ancient Greece in the Trojan war had his one little weak spot, what proved to be a fatal flaw, and the "Achilles Heel" for Green Giant Arborvitae is hypersensitivity to salt.

This arb will probably not grow out of fashion as the Bradford Pear. The simple reason is that is a durable plant choice. This is plant that will become very common in a wide range of landscape applications. People like plants that look and grow well with little care.

We would be happy to help you if you need these plants. Buy, sell, or trade is our motto. If we can't use an item maybe we can trade it to someone else that can, or sell it at our "flea market store" in the town of Milan where we own some more properties. It's up north in Bradford County near the border with New York. "Wanna" trade for some hunting, camping, or searching for Susquehanna Indian artifacts up there? We can do that too.

I once put an ad in the paper that said, "If it free its for me," but soon had to cancel it because I collected so much great used stuff. For example, I had enough paint to dip an entire VILLAGE in it, let alone paint a house. Disposal became an issue. That's how I came up with the barter and trade idea. Now, it is TREE and SHRUBS we need to dispose of. Email us about your surplus materials, send a list with brief descriptions. Or call us.

Barter has proven to be a great is a great way to meet new people too.

Though I did not invent this wheel I have accumulated enough wheels so that it appears I might have. Barter has become a means of exchanging my surpluses for other people's surpluses. Here is a sample list from an ad that I ordinarily run on my website www.seedlingsrus.com :

Trades Wanted

We are always looking to trade our surplus nursery stock and seedlings for your surplus.

Examples of what make a ready trade are:

ANY Construction materials and equipment (lumber, brick, sand, cement, steel, etc., etc.)

Plumbing supplies

Hunting and fishing gear and items

Hand tools

Farm implements

Farm supplies

Fencing materials

Palletized stone

Lumber

Household items

Livestock

Click here for driving directions: http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?country=US&addtohistory=&formtype=address&searchtype=address&cat=&address=5275%20Swamp%20Rd&city=Fountainville&state=PA&zipcode=18923%2d9609&searchtab=home

Please sign up for our newsletter/email list at http://www.seedlingsrus.com/123456signup.html

We use our newsletter and email list to announce many of the specials and free/surplus items that we offer other than this unique situation.

Thanks again for your interest,

Bill Hirst

215-651-8329