How to plant Trees: Bare root, root ball and container trees explained

This handy video guide explains everything you need to know about planting trees such as bare root, root ball and container trees for your garden. Garden Ninja shows you each of the tree types and why you may choose them.

All explained by Garden Ninja, Manchesters Garden Designer and blogger Lee Burkhill. He's an RHS winning garden designer and expert panellist on BBC Radio Manchester's Saturday morning garden phone in.

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Welcome back to garden ninja and today I'm going to be talking about one of my favourite things trees! so I'm going to explain today the different options you have when buying trees for your garden or garden design and there's gonna be three types that are talked about today and the first is gonna be the good old trusty bare root which is probably the cheapest and easiest of trees the second is going to be a root ball tree a little bit more expensive bit harder to plant and then the third is the container tree super easy the most expensive the three what gets your instant results so come on let's get cracking!

So here we have an example of a bare root tree this is a Gleditsia sunburst great trees for exposed areas poor soil to basically grow anywhere they're quite vigorous so you want to cut the protective bag off this bare root and show you exactly what a bare root tree looks like in comparison to the root ball now bare roots are lifted during the late autumn to early winter when the trees are dormant so you'll notice that everywhere looks really glib and wet and that's because it's winter so this is the bare root and you can literally see all the roots the tap roots and the fibrous roots here had most of the soil apart from that bit of bark and taken off so nice we kept moist and then you get them in as quickly as you can.

Here we have some really good examples of root ball trees they're a root ball tree has been grown in the ground and then usually a machine mechanically cuts through under the roots and lift it off as a ball most of the time for high quality root ball it will have been done a number of times because it encourages more vigorous roots to grow it's finally lifted for the last time then wrapped in the Hessian and then a wire mesh keeps all that soil around the roots so it's got minimal disturbance they are more expensive than bare roots because they're a lot heavier you can usually get some more mature trees and shrubs in a root ball than you can in a bare root also the success rates with root balls are much higher than bare roots but again it's all down to the preparation and planting the sooner you can get them in to higher the chance of success.

Here's a good example of a container grown tree so they come in a pot or container that they've been in for maybe a matter of months or even years in some cases and they have really fibrous roots so the roots have been able to really grow vigorously in that pot it means that with container growing trees you can get all sorts of different shapes and varieties these are a pleached tree so these are grown on a frame and have been grown to look a bit like either a square or a rectangle you can get huge containers with fully form trees that might be 12 15 even 20 meters high so you've got mass variety with container grown trees because it takes so long to grow they're very expensive but it does mean that if you're doing a garden design you can get them in and get instant effect whether you're planting a container root ball of bare-root tree you usually need to make sure that the hole you're digging it for is at least one and a half times the width of the pots will either keep it at the same depth as the root ball, pot or bare root and don't be tempted to dig it in any deeper because this can harm and damage the tree especially if it's a grafted tree always make sure that you stake the tree adequately and use a tree tag that isn't going to rub against the stem of the tree and damaging so there we have it my super easy guide to bare roots root balls and container grown trees if you've liked this video why not subscribe to my youtube channel with there's more garden design how-to guides and tips i've been garden ninja happy gardening!