Saving Ancient Olives – Moving them to Napa

Yesterday we installed nine of these Sevillano Olive trees in Napa. These 80-plus year old trees were located at a site where they would have been destroyed by a new construction project. So we got an amazing deal on them.

Here are some pictures of the guys installing the trees with a crane.

The trees came on flatbeds trucks, three at a time, and we used a crane, a Gradall excavator and a Kuboto tractor to plant them and move dirt around. We dug the holes 3 ft deep and 8 ft wide. It turned out the holes were a little too deep. Olives like good drainage. Careful packaging and tying of the branches is very important to keep the trees looking their fullest and best on a delivery like this.

The trees look old and gnarly with lots of character. They look beautiful flanking the driveway of their new home. As Dr. Andrew Weil, the physician and author who writes about health and healthy aging, would say, “Old trees don’t need botox.”

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