Quest for Character: Loving Imperfect Tree

We are wabi-sabi people. I'm guessing that most of y'all reading this, like me, prefer a handmade, special coffee cup to the typical ubiquitous cylinder mug – even if that old mug has a chip in it. We see beauty in the imperfections of life. But the American sliced cheese phenomenon thrust itself into everything from mugs to furniture to food. Even into plants. And trees.

Nurseries and many landscapers love standardized trees. They see efficiency. I see boring, American-cheese trees, since I make gardens for wabi-sabi beauty, which presents a big ole' challenge.

A typical live oak tree from a big commercial nursery.

I for a special project, I needed real, natural-growing trees. I searched the state, the next state over and into central Florida. No luck. So I called on my old friend, Greg. He's a tree whisperer who knows where every characterful, twisted, perfectly imperfect tree hides.

Greg's out there with his window down, auburn curls catching the breeze, cruising backroads in what looks like a prop from a steampunk movie. His tree spade truck is a beast of metal blades, sagging hoses, and hydraulic arms - the kind of machine that makes people of all ages stop and point. The understated logo on the side tells you everything you need to know: 'BIG TREE SALES.'

That logo doesn't tell you that Greg has saved countless gardens from the curse of conformity - from the Zoo to Botanical Gardens to famous golf courses to very special private spaces. Greg and I have planted a forest of wabi-sabi trees. There are so many details of tree selection that I can’t go into here. In fact, there’s an entire chapter on picking trees in my new book.

For a current garden design project, nestled into a maritime live oak forest on the coast of South Carolina, he's who I called. When Greg's voice crackled through my phone: "I know where a whole field of wonky oaks is, Jenks. Every size you want."

His directions were pure Greg: "Meet me down country in the field past the broken chain gate, off Mosquito Creek Road, before the bridge that's out. 2 pm. Tuesday." I could see his mischievous smile through the phone. He knew he had exactly what I needed. We spent a broiling afternoon picking precisely the right trees – some with trunks as big as a light pole, and twenty feet tall and wide – full of character.

Technically, you can move big trees any time of year, but the process is risky. I do every single thing I can to minimize risk. We set a date for December – winter being the safest time.

We'd transplant one tree per day, spending hours on aftercare, getting the soil settled around her roots, mulching, installing her personal irrigation system, and building a protective fence. Her roots would get a drench of bacterial inoculant and another of fish emulsion—both would encourage lots of new roots. We’re not planting a nursery commodity; we’re adopting a gosling and helping her become a swan.

When Greg finally pulled up that foggy winter morning, his steampunk machine carrying our first twisted beauty, I knew we were about to witness something remarkable. What you're about to see isn't just a tree being planted - it's a 30-year-old story being carefully lifted from one chapter and placed into another. This is how I believe we maintain the soul of a landscape.

Learn more about EG Tree Services here and watch as Greg's machine, for all its industrial might, handles this living sculpture with the precision of a surgeon's hands: