Help Tree planting soil depth

Hi Guys,

I'm new to the forum and require some help please, I have 20 Hornbeams(carpinus betulus) being delivered tomorrow which are around 7/8ft in heights and I plan on pleaching them but I may have a problem with the soil dept of my garden, long story short is my house was built on an engineered hill and as a result our gardens have not much soil depth(which I only found out today) as I went to dig the holes for my new trees I hit the stone only after 6 inches! This is core stone fill!now I was planning to raise this area anyway with more topsoil of about 6 inches which will bring it up tl 12 inches in total depth, so my question is that enough? The trees roots will have plenty of room to spread horizontal tho but only 12inches of depth.

 

As a hedge I think you'd get away with it, but not as a pleach ... I think they need to grow "like trees" and get their roots down.

If they are potted I'd leave them be until the ground is ready. If they are rootballed or bare-root I'd get some big pots and covert them to potted ... until the ground is ready

I got Lime Pleach plants in the Spring, but the ground wasn't ready. They were bare root - which in that case meant "almost no root". I potted them and didn't get around to planting until late August. Fair to say I was astonished at how much root they had developed in that time. For bare-root with that little root (at arrival) they would need to stay in pots for long enough until well rooted (so the rootall doesn't fall to bits when planting) but if rootballed they will be plant-ready at any time - assuming that doesn't fall to bits when you plant them - clay-rootball obviously better than sand ... over the years I've received both and Clay rootball definitely better .

You could stand / sink the pots in-situ until the ground can be made ready, so they look-the-part in the meantime, and then actually plant-out when the plants / rootballs are planting-ready


Trench - dug with JCB and back filled with decent compost and soil



How the rootballs looked at planting time 6-7 months after being potted.





In the planting trench (extension to existing Pleach, in background)



Newcomers in foreground, old-timers beyond.