I want to buy 8 evergreen trees for my property. I would like the trees to be about 6-7 feet tall as I’m looking to immediately put up a screen between my neighbors house and mine (Good folks, I just like privacy). The trees would be planted on about a 3 foot rise about 40-50 feet from my house thus putting the tops about 9-10 feet high or about one story tall. In my area I’m seeing prices roughly somewhere around 275$ -300$ per tree. But to my surprise it costs another 40-50% to have the trees planted by the nurseries around here. That’s a lot of bucks for planting. I’ve never bought or planted trees before and I do all the labor I can on everything in my house to save money. I’d certainly like to plant these trees myself and save a ton of money and I think it would be more gratifying. But my question is : Is there really a big down side to planting the trees on your own rather than having the nursery plant them? I have heard nurseries guarantee success when they plant – but for the $1,200 I’d save on planting , it seems to me I could afford several failures? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

I received these 12 dark green or American dark green arborvitae for free. They are 3 years old and about 6 ft tall. The problem I have is they don’t seem to be getting very thick or full. The nasty looking seeds add to the problem by weighing down the limbs making it look ugly. My question is, what can I do to create a lush green arborvitae? Should I painstakingly remove all the seeds, fertilize more, or prune often? Or is this just the way this particular arborvitae looks? Seeing that they were given to me I won’t feel particularly guilty getting rid of them and trying something new. Any assistance would be most appreciated.