Hoerr Nursery Selling Several 45,000 Pound Trees to Park in St. Louis

Peoria, IL -- Hoerr Nursery is selling mature trees to Environmental Design, a company in Texas, who is moving these gigantic trees to a new urban park in downtown St. Louis. A crew from TX has been working at Hoerr Nursery, 8020 N Shade Tree Drive, Peoria, digging enormous ditches and creating giant crates for the trees (the tree and the root ball weigh about 45,000 pounds ea. i.e. 22.5 tons).

Starting November 24, they erected a crane on site to load these enormous trees on flatbeds to drive to St. Louis.

Jane Mason, Marketing Director said, “As far as I know is the first time that this process of digging these huge trees out of the ground and shipping them by flatbed, has happened in Peoria. Environmental Design is also buying and crating trees from a nursery in Bloomington. Those trees are also going to the park in St. Louis as part of the same job.”
 

Key facts:

• Each tree and the root ball weigh from 40,000-50,000 pounds
• Hoerr Nursery is selling at least 5 giant trees to the Texas firm for installation in a city park in St. Louis MO, about 4 hours away by flatbed truck.
• The root ball on these trees is many times larger than what the largest Hoerr Nursery “Big John” tree space can handle.
• The cost to the customer to purchase one of these giant trees and have it planted can range from $20,000 to about $100,000. (Depending on the variety and size of the tree, the age of the tree, the difficulty in getting it boxed up, and the distance to be traveled.)
• After the box is created to hold the root ball, the crew needs to dig underneath the box to slide the slats across the bottom – underneath the 45,000 pounds. The slats form the bottom of the crate. Then the crate is banded with heavy-duty metal straps to hold it all together.
• The branches of the trees are gathered into a harness and the tension on the harness is slowly tightened to pull the branches in as close to the tree as possible.
• Then the tree and root ball are lifted by a crane and loaded onto a flatbed and driven to their ultimate location.
• Most of the trees selected at Hoerr Nursery are Swamp White Oaks. Some of the trees were started by acorn by Jim Hoerr, one of the three brothers who were the second generation to own the nursery. Three cousins from the third generation own the nursery now.

Hoerr Nursery is an award-winning third-generation nursery, landscape service and Garden Center company in its 82nd year in Central Illinois. This Fall, it was among three winners in a North American merchandising contest from Hort Couture. The nursery was featured as the cover story on the July 2008 issue of Today’s Garden Center magazine, a publication distributed to 20,000 garden centers. Hoerr Nursery has been named in the “Top 100” of all Independent Garden Centers in the Country by Nursery Retailer Magazine. It has also been recognized, for the third year in a row, as One of the Top 100 Revolutionary Garden Centers in the Country.

Having sold over 250,000 trees in its 83 year history, Hoerr Nursery specializes in landscape installation and design, nursery production with wholesaling and retailing, growing and planting trees, lawn and landscape maintenance and care services, irrigation installation and maintenance, retail offerings of annuals, perennials, and shrubs, seasonal and holiday products and a retail garden center. Open Monday through Saturday.

Click here for the article in the Peoria Journal Star

Hoerr Nursery
8020 N Shade Tree Drive, Peoria, IL 61615
309-691-4561
www.HoerrNursery.com

Quite Simply. Amazing.

# # #