tree ideas for a 12 acres forest/Arboretum?

I am starting a 12 acres forest/Arboretum on my farm, it is going to take quite awhile to plant out and a lot longer for them to grow but I think it will be worth it. I hate Australian Native Gum Trees as they can be very counterproductive, so I will be planting a lot of useful deciduous tree as well as a few evergreen trees such as Tagasaste. I will be planting fruit trees in the forest that will be just for the wildlife to eat. Here is a short list of the trees I will be planting out and if you have any favourite kind of tree that you think I have missed please let me know and I will add them to the list:

Oak, Elm, Ash, Beech, Silver Birch, Japanese Maple, Horse Chestnut, Poplars, Weeping Willows, Fig, Hazel, Walnut, Magnolia, Moringa, Tagasaste, Date Palm, Sequoiadendron Giganteum, Peppercorn.

 

With 12 acres Nick you could have one of just about everything that grows locally! What is your ultimate aim with the land? Creation of a wild space that won't be used by humans? A future food / wood resource? The answer to those questions will help guide your planting choices.

 

I have 30 acres all up and I only need 10-15 acres tops for my Permaculture project, so I have a lot of empty space to one side of the property.
It is mainly going to be fore wildlife but having said that I hope to be self sufficient for autumn leaves by 2030, 95% of which will be coming out of my forest. I will spend a fair bit of time in their playing the flute and also relaxing in summer.
I won’t ever need it as a wood resource because I back onto a Eucalyptus forest and I am allowed to collect firewood within 100 meters of my fence line. And I wont need it as a food resource as all the people and animal food crops will be on the other side of the block. Not all of the trees are going to be in the 12 acre forest, I am going to have 20 Persian Oaks down the driveway and I am shore that I will always try and fit a deciduous tree in were ever the will fit because other that firewood I really hate Eucalyptus trees.
I am a fairly young man, which means I will be abele to see my forest reach 80 years old before I turn 100.

 

How can you hate on Eucalypt? Looking up into a 100 year old tree, bearing the scars of many storms, smashed and hollow branches with bird and animal life teeming out of them, and you think that isn't a good forest tree?

I guess what I'm saying, is that it's your forest and you can do as you please, but you can't hate on a certain species of tree. Where I work, people hate Casuarina and Acacia, hate with a passion, which leads to many tree deaths. Seems silly, don't you think?

 

I think that when people are planting something that's not especially for themselve but also for nature it should be trees that belong there and also should be standing in a way that it's natural for them. I can understand that some people don't like certain trees on some parts of the world, because they behave exotic and kill species that do belong there. They stand in a natural system, where there is no place for them and theirfore they can be very distructive. I also don't like for excample Robinia pseudoacacia (fals acacia), because it's very agressive in the Netherlands and takes space from native species like from the sommer oak (Quercus robur) whitch feeds 40 wasps of the Cynipoidea, around 40 macro fungi, around 600 insects and many other species while on a nonnative specie live in total around 5-maximum 40 species. And in the Netherlands nitrogen is a big problem on natural sites. You have to look at witch animals are still living in your area so that you can help them. You can also include non native species to make it less interesting for them.

 

nick
track down Bill Funk he has the most amazing tree collecton in Australia both on his farm"merryweather' and he has built a very good arboureatum in his local town Dunkeld
iv onley spoken to him on the phone he seems fairly conservative in that western victorian way
hate is a strong word .but your young and passionate and we know what you mean
keep in touch and ill suggest where you can get acorns later do you want some gleditsia/ robinia seeds
robert
i was going to sugest robinia was one of the best things you could plant for nitrogen and timber and fodder (legumes from a plant breeders point of view are easily improved eg hungarien plant breeders turned false acacia into shipmast locust fairly quickly) so it might be possible to design a variety that doesnt sucker

 

Andrew I would love some Honey locust seed if you have any to spare!

To the list I am adding: Honey Locust, Persimmons, Paulownia and loquat.

I have heard of the Dunkeld arboretum, apparently it has the second largest oak plantation in Australia, the Dunkeld arboretum is open by appointment only and Dunkeld is 116km from where I live, I will go check it out if I can find the time.
I already have most of the trees on my list either in seed form or as seedlings in pots, I have or can easily get: English Oak, Red Oak, Persian Oak, Ash, Silver Birch, Japanese maple, Horse Chestnut, Poplars, Weeping Willows, Fig, Moringa, Tagasaste, Date Palm, Sequoiadendron Giganteum, and Peppercorn, loquat.

The small percentage of native animals (I.e. koala) that prefer Eucalyptus trees over the trees I have listed have a very large forest of Eucalyptus trees which they can enjoy, the forest I back onto is the Pyrenees ranges state forest, which has 36, 275 acres of Eucalyptus trees!

A 100 year old Eucalyptus trees can be very beautiful, on my property there is 5 Eucalyptus trees that would each be at least 300 years old but Just because something can be beautiful doesn’t make it good, a snap frost in the early hours of a November morning is breathtakingly beautiful as the ice crystals gleam in the morning sun but after it killed all my tomato seedlings you wont see me liking frosts anytime soon.
Just out of sheer respect for their age i would never cut down such a large tree as the 5 old ones I have on my farm, but I will never plant Eucalyptus trees on my property as long as I have the state forest behind me. I will also continue to remove any Eucalyptus tree I find on my property that is less than 3 meters tall.

I don’t have a problem with all native flora just Eucalyptus trees, because not all trees are equal, I would rather see the hills covered in Eucalyptus trees than see them bare but this country would be a lot better off if the trees I listed took the place of all the Eucalyptus trees, the koalas wouldn’t like it much but lets face it any animal that only eats one type of food from the one type of tree wants to go extinct.

 

So koalas are the only animal that use Eucalypts?

And I would like to see these 300 year old trees, pictures please!?

 

So does that mean that all those folk that only eat McDonalds.....?

 

message me your addres
elmhurst has a lovley avenue of honour 28 large quercus canariensis id love to know who planted them
i believe some of your eucaliptis caldumensis could be up to 300 yo
the arbouraetum seemed to be open all the time when i visited earlier this year they have used eucs to protect the usefull trees from dry wind etc

 

do some research in local library i found the local TAFE library very good whilst i waited for wife to do here course. find out what the endemic plants are for you area especially the rarer ones, this way you not only improve habitat for the critters but you improve the status of plants that should be there. remember if planting for windbreak try not to plan to stop the wind a good result would be a 10% reduction max' 20%, if you stop too much it will surf over the top and come down the other side with a vengeance.

len

 

If you like Eucalyptus trees than you can plant them all over your farm but with the trees you must like what having them will mean, they can poison the ground from the roots underneath and from the leaves above, how if they catch on fire the explode in flames throwing sparks for hundreds of meters, or how they drop there branches for no reason giving them the nickname of widow makers, or how when you water their invasive roots suck up all the water making you have to water up to 10x the amount, or how they take up all that water and precipitate as little as possible, local studies have shown a 100 year old common Oak can precipitate the same as 500 Eucalyptus trees of the same age.

Now i think we should get back on topic, because as you can see I have good reason for not liking Eucalyptus trees.

Andrew you seem to know my area fairly well, I have seen the 28 Algerian Oak trees in Elmhurst many times, I will PM you my address this afternoon, now I am off to go help out a friend of mine harvesting lavender at the Barkly Lavender and Rose farm, I love the smell of cut lavender in the morning.

 

Mmmm have an extra sniff for me....

 

casurina leaumeanii

has been sucessfully forested in your area
the otway forest network has members out as far as you they are doing clever things with agroforestry
we know you meant about transpiration

 

yes eucalypts probably not teh best option on 12 acres, for safety they need to be at least 60 meters away from anything ie.,. fence lines structures for us we prefer 100 meters, on 12 acres would be thinking small tree shrub type habitat, that is all we can do on 1 acre as well.

grew our best grasses etc.,. under mature gum trees they only prevent other trees from growing within their drip line, especially in dry spells when plenty of moisture not noticably so.

but especially down south gum's should be about 4k away for those disastrous fires, we don't get them like that in qld, well not yet but the way they are clearing and farming the brigalow belt we will soon catch up maybe. sad to see many still down south preffering that home among the gumtrees, no lessons learnt from past tragedies.

with tree plantings their is a duty of care, none of you trees should pose a risk to the public or neighbours.

len

 

dont forget
carob, cork oak,

 

how much rainfall do you get there?
what altitude ,slope ,access to water?
great project!

 

I forgot about cork oak, I was going to have the carobs in the orchard on the other side of the farm but I might plant a few in the forest.

* We have about 500-550mm annual Rainfall(more in a good year).
* Our altitude is approx 350m.
*Our slope ranges from near level up to 45 degrees in spots.
* Excellent catchment when it rains and when it doesn’t we have access to dams and underground water.

 

you should get a xmas pressie this week
your local landcare group may be able to GIVE you things like bunya ,kurrajing,red ceder , australian teak.bursaria spinosa(one of my favourite natives),casurina etc

 

where possible direct seed your large seeds oaks, walnuts,etc in the site where you intend the tree to be
into well prepared soil either sheet mulching,ground auger ,a well timed application of roundup can save you a lot of time aripping tine with a blade plough is better.M ulch with vetch/subclover etc
my dad uses black plastic and his oaks outgrow mine
cover with generous leaf mould
there would be lots of forestry equipment lying idle south of hamilton/