April is when the nursery truly comes alive!
After months of winter planning and preparation, the fields are buzzing with activity. Our SGN crews are working hard around the farm and we have all settled into the rhythm of spring.
There are many moving parts at the nursery in April. Some days we’re tagging trees with customers, others we’re digging, loading, and shipping out trees, and other days we’re planting our liner crops. Often we’re doing all of these things (and more) before lunch!
Once the trees are dug, they make their way to the yard where another phase of the season begins. Rows of freshly dug trees are staged and organized for shipping, waiting to be loaded onto trucks headed to job sites, municipalities, and landscape projects. The yard becomes a hub of activity as crews position trees, prepare orders, and coordinate shipments so everything arrives exactly when and where it’s needed.
At the same time, the work in the fields continues with the next generation of trees. Spring is the planting season for liners, our young trees that will spend the next several years growing in our fields. Each liner planted represents the future! The trees we plant today will one day bring beauty and shade to streets, parks, schools, and backyards across the Midwest. We typically plant trees in April, however this year we planted our liners in March! The warm weather gave us the go-ahead to get the trees in the ground, so now we are focusing on making sure they are happy in their new homes this spring.
At the end of this month, we will also celebrate our favorite holiday – ARBOR DAY! Stay tuned for some fun Arbor Day pictures to come planting trees with the local schools.
Spring work can feel fast and intense, but we’re grateful for the change of pace. Digging, staging, shipping, planting – each task connects to the next in a steady flow that carries us through the busiest weeks of the season.
For us, April is a reminder of why we love what we do. We are honored to do the work of farming and stewarding this land to grow trees. Farming is an act of hope, and it’s a continual exercise in having faith. There is a lot of collective anxiety right now, and rightfully so. We look around and there is an incredible amount of destruction, war, environmental disaster, and disgusting displays of wealth and power when so many are suffering. People are feeling lost, alone, and disconnected from their bodies, their communities and, in turn, the land.
But it is precisely by returning to the land that we begin to heal those relationships within our spirits, to each other, and to creation itself. Whether you farm thousands of acres of row crops, one hundred acres of trees, one raised garden bed, or are struggling to keep a houseplant alive – we want to encourage you to continue to cultivate that relationship with the land this Spring. Get outside, grow a garden, plant a tree. Join the TreeVolution!
Follow along with us we grow into 2026. We hope you enjoy these scenes from around the farm this season:
