“We’re careful not to appear competitive with commercial landscape-type nurseries,” he explained. While many of the Indian Mound Nursery staff are knowledgeable about arbor culture, Vanderveer said, their main focus is forestry and wildlife and habitat improvement. He suggested that a landowner would need about half an acre before considering that many seedlings. “For someone’s yard, that’s a lot of trees,” he said. Indian Mound Nursery does not usually work with individual homeowners, Vanderveer explained, because the smallest unit his operation sells is 50 seedlings. Although most of the annual seedling crop is pine, Indian Mound Nursery also grows an ever-increasing number of hardwoods, producing nearly a million hardwood seedlings this year, Vanderveer said. “To get big trees you have to start with little trees,” explained Harry Vanderveer, nursery operations coordinator at Indian Mound Nursery, whose east Texas operation produces 13 to 16 million “little trees” each year.

Even though they don’t usually sell seedlings directly to homeowners, the Texas Forest Service’s seedling program can greatly impact homeowners as on-going research helps determine which trees are best grown in each region of Texas.

While the Texas Forest Service provides reforestation seedlings - from 1,000 to several million seedlings per order for large acreage plantings - they also provide as few as 50 seedlings for smaller planting projects and provide wildlife packets containing mixed species that are designed for five acre and larger parcels. The Texas Forest Service seedling program, which provides seedling trees from two locations - Indian Mound Nursery in Alto and West Texas Nursery in Idalou - plays a significant role in reforestation, aforestation and urban forestry programs, growing and selling seedlings for a variety of purposes. The Texas Forest Service, part of the Texas A&M University System since its creation in 1915, works to protect and sustain the state’s trees, forests and related natural resources. Ven though much of the world thinks Texas is filled with nothing but cactus, cattle and cowboys, more than 22 million acres of the state are forested.

Tree seedlings