About This Blog

I started this blog as a way to record my experience choosing, planting, and growing a variety of native trees at my home in Northeast Ohio. In 2020, my family and I moved into a new home on about a half-acre of land with only a few dead and dying fruit trees and an Eastern White Pine. 

Our backyard in April 2022. Two bare old apple trees in the background and an adolescent Eastern White Pine on the right represent all the trees on our property. A blank slate for things to come...

While my yard is fairly empty (for now), it's surrounded by a beautiful mix of native trees including red and sugar maples, boxelder, pin oaks, walnuts, and green ash. There are also some non-native trees such as Norway maple, Norway spruce, and a few invasive Callery/Bradford pear trees. I intend for our tree selection to add both to this beauty as well as to the native biodiversity of our local landscape. 

Our backyard in Fall 2022. New additions include an American Elm front and center, a Bald Cypress in the back left, two tiny Shagbark Hickories on the right, all surrounded by some nice fall colors in our neighbors' yards.  

When it comes to trees, I'm a novice. So I've had to soak up a lot of information from a variety of sources over the past few years. But perhaps the most useful sources have been the blogs from similar amateurs that document the long process, year after year, of growing their trees including the factors they considered, the challenges they encountered, their successes and (of equal importance) their failures. After all, success comes from experience and experience comes from failure. 

My goal for this blog is twofold. First and most immediately, I believe recording my experiences will help me stay focused on the long process, put my experience in perspective, and learn valuable lessons along the way. Secondly, I hope that by documenting my experiences, perhaps I can offer some value to others as they embark on their own tree-planting journeys.