FAQs

This is basically how often a tree has been lifted from the field, had it’s roots trimmed back and then been replanted (normally in a different field and on a wider spacing).

Growing a tree in a field nursery is all about creating the best possible root system (you want strong fibrous roots rather than course roots. It’s the fibrous roots which take up the water and nutrients), and ensuring the roots and canopy are in balance. (It helps ensure that all the lovely root system is within the rootball we lift and not outside the rootball and left in the field!)  This is all done to help improve the survival and establishment time of a tree in its final landscape planting.

Yes, all our trees are grown in 100% peat free compost. Hillier Trees has been peat free for over 15 years and along with our compost supplier we have perfected what we believe to be the best peat free mix available, using sustainably sourced materials. We do incorporate a small percentage of coir, which is now 100% recycled coir.

Find out more about our peat free nurseries.   

At Hillier we sell trees from 8cm girth through to 100cm+ girth. Our Semi-Mature and Super Semi-Mature trees are a particular speciality of Hillier, some of our larger trees will have been in our Hampshire fields for over 30 years and we are the UK’s leading supplier of semi mature trees. For an update list of our larger trees please contact us.

We grow a full range of our native trees in both containers and field grown root balls. We can offer native trees from 8cm girth to 60cm+ Many of our native tree range have originated from UK seed provenance and will have been in our fields for a minimum of 5 years.

Absolutely! We love showing our customers our wide range of UK grown trees. Please contact your Account Manager or email trees@hillier.co.uk to arrange an appointment, but please make sure you put enough time aside for your visit, we have over 700 acres of field grown trees and 75 acres of container trees to show you!

We guarantee that your trees will be top quality and will arrive to your site in perfect condition. We grow our trees with the key criteria being that every tree will be grown following the best horticultural practice, so helping ensure a tree will establish successfully and quickly in its final landscape position. We pride ourselves in producing trees with an exceptional root system, and a well-developed and balanced canopy. Ultimately the successful establishment of a tree does come down to how well it is planted, watered and maintained, together with the environment and soil conditions. These are all variables that we as growers can not control or dictate, which makes it impossible for us to guarantee a tree with establish successfully.

The information on our tree sizes, container sizes and rootball weights can all be found in our useful resources pages

Hillier are one of the few nurseries in the UK with a dedicated nursery for contract growing stock and containerisation.

We can grow a tree to almost any specification your client requires (given sufficient time!) We really enjoy dealing with complicated and long term contracts and have a great track record on successfully delivering these type of projects. Please contact Caroline Swann our Business Development Manager to discuss your project

We have a very experienced and knowledgeable team at Hillier, and if we can help we will. We like to get involved in projects as early as we can, where we can offer advice on the trees which might work best and will be available at the specifications you require at the point the project is installed. Please contact our Business Development Manager Caroline Swann or your Account Manager.

Please refer to our height / girth size table on our Tree Specification page.