What size to plant young trees.

[Darwin.]

I have trees I grew from seed, there's 4 sycamore and a horse chestnut. The biggest is just over 18", the smallest just over 12". They're too big for the small pots they're in now so I have a choice of potting them on to a slightly bigger pot for another year or planting them out in the ground. I had hazelnut that I was looking forward to planting but the dog killed them and an apple tree, he's gone now.

What size should I be waiting for them to reach before planting them in the ground? I was considering potting on the smaller ones and planting out the bigger ones.

Leading on from that, these are from seeds I collected in the local forest so it's not smaller versions of anything like you'd get in the garden centre. How fast do chestnut and sycamore grow? I don't want to plant them too close to the house if they'll be monsters in 10 years.

Thanks in advance for any advice given.

[nickdub]

Likely to get too big for any normal sized garden. You could plant them out now as long as the ground is moist. Maybe put them somewhere you like to go for walks then you can see how they do over the years ?

I like growing trees from seed too - I've got some ornamental maples I've grown myself from seeds collected from local gardens for example.

[Darwin.]

My garden is an acre, I have a 14 year old oak in the middle of the front lawn and a nice sized orchard down the back. There's plenty of room for them, I just need to figure out where, there's already about 80 trees dotted about the place.

[burnie]

I planted a conker and an acorn as a child in my Dads garden, at the bottom of about half an acre in size. I revisited the old house a few years ago and they are still there, at around 60 years old both were covered in acorns and conkers, hard to say how big, must be forty feet I would have guessed, totally took over the bottom of the garden, no grass growing under them or anything that I could see.

[Darwin.]

Sounds perfect, something to sit under with plenty of shade in my old age.

I might put some of the sycamore in a new hedge at the bottom of the orchard, they'd grow out over a small stream the edge of a bog. I'll stick the chestnut either out front or in the orchard and one sycamore out front but well away from the house.

[Zelenina]

The chestnut will be nice. Sycamores are very good at self seeding, so you need to be prepared to weed them out unless you want your whole garden turned into a forest.

[nickdub]

My garden is an acre, I have a 14 year old oak in the middle of the front lawn and a nice sized orchard down the back. There's plenty of room for them, I just need to figure out where, there's already about 80 trees dotted about the place.

Sounds lovely - figure on about 50 ft high ultimately, so the trees should go about 100ft from each other, however you could plant them closer and figure to group them or even just enjoy them as young trees but plan on thinning them - probably takes 50 years to grow a full size horse chestnut for example.

I have a liriodendron I planted about 30 years ago, which is just getting cracking now at about 60 ft - but I don't expect to live to see it reach full size :-)

If you fancy another good specimen try getting a few fresh walnuts in the Autumn and planting some of them.