July Special! Althea – Rose of Sharon in Multiple Colors 15Gal $80 each
Althea – Rose of Sharon
Hibiscus syriacus, also called Rose of Sharon is on sale! It is a flowering shrub reaching 6-14 feet in height. The flowers come in several colors, including white, pink, purple, blue, red or bicolors. Continuous blooms often occur from July through September. The flowers can reach 2-4 inches in diameter.
Call or stop by Chambersville Tree Farm today to learn more about our July special “Rose of Sharon”.
Local Sales Office: (972) 837-4223
Save The Date For RoseDango 2014!
Saturday May 3, 2014. Gates open at 8:00 am and close at 5:00pm. We will have great speakers, a wide variety of vendors, lunch and more! Check www.rosedango.com and www.chambersvilletreefarms.com for more information and updates!
Q&A Forum 9/5/13
September 5, 2013 we will be hosting a Q&A Forum on our Chambersville TF Staff page on Facebook from 6-7pm. Barbara Villarreal will be taking and answering your questions you have about trees, shrubs and roses. We look forward to chatting with you! Also, don’ t forget to like our interest page!
https://www.facebook.com/#!/chambersvilletf001?fref=ts
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Chambersville-Tree-Farms/115157668596795?ref=br_tf
Save the Date for RoseDango 2013!
April 28, 2013
RoseDango is coming early this year! Sunday April 28, 2013! We are getting all of our speakers together and looking forward to a great bloom and great speakers! Please visit www.rosedango.com for details and updates for RoseDango 2013!
10/10/12 Japanese Maple Event @ Dallas Arboretum
Chambersville Tree Farm is sponsoring a Japanese Maple Conference at the Dallas Arboretum to expand attendees knowledge on this magnificent tree. Guest speakers include: Dr. David Creech, Harold Spiegel, and Talon Buchholz. Dr. David Creech is a Professor of Horticulture at Stephen F Austin University. Harold Spiegel is the Founder and Owner of Preservation Tree Service and a Japanese Maple enthusiast. Talon Buchholz is Owner and President of Buchholz & Buchholz Nursery in Gaston, Oregon which specialize in Japanese Maples and Conifers. We look forward to seeing everyone there, please stay tuned for more details.
RoseDango is set for October 21st 2012
RoseDango is quickly approching, so save the date! October 21, 2012. Gates open at 8:00 am and close at 5:00pm. We will have great speakers, a wide variety of vendors, lunch and more! Check www.rosedango.com and www.chambersvilletreefarms.com for more information and updates!
Chambersville Tree Farm will be at ArborDay in Van Alstyne! 4-28-12
Come visit Chambersville Tree Farm at Van Alstyne’s Arbor Day Festival on April 28, 2012! It will be a half day event celebrating trees! The event is sponsored by Keep Van Alstyne Beautiful and will be held down town. If you’re not busy come visit us at our booth and help us celebrate these beautiful wonders! Visit Keep Van Alstyne Beautiful facebook page for more information about the event. www.facebook.com/pages/Keep-Van-Alstyne-Beautiful/226466227433929
Garden club gets 25-foot-long thank-you
By Dan Eakin, deakin@starlocalnews.com
About 60 members of the McKinney Garden Club lined up behind a 25-foot-long thank-you banner from Caldwell Elementary School students and teachers at a club meeting Tuesday at Heard-Craig Hall.
The students and teachers were expressing their gratitude for a recent $500 donation to the Caldwell Community Gardens Club at the school.
Carolyn Curfman, who with Marilee Crawford and Marcie York serve as volunteer leaders to help with the gardens, told McKinney Garden Club members the money is being used to purchase seeds, plants, craft items and gloves for children. Some of the money will go toward purchasing a tool shed for the gardens.
The three women provide leadership to as many as a dozen volunteers who help in the gardens. Volunteers are either members of First United Methodist Church (FUMC), parents or master gardeners.
About two years ago, some FUMC members conceived the idea of planting a flower garden just outside the Caldwell school library so teachers could have a pleasant place to go for a break or lunch and where students could study nature. That idea eventually blossomed into having both a flower garden and a vegetable garden.
The FUMC, Collin County Master Gardeners Association and Chambersville Tree Farm have made contributions to the gardens.
Last year, about 15 students signed up to join the Caldwell Elementary School Community Garden Club. This year, after the gardens obviously did so well, 150 students joined the club, Curfman said.
Crawford said the students really enjoy working in the garden, planting seeds or plants and watching them grow.
The flowers add beauty to the school campus, and the vegetables provide food for many of the families of children who attend Caldwell Elementary, Crawford said.
“Many of the children at Caldwell would not otherwise have many garden vegetables at home,” she said, “and in the spring they often get sacks of vegetables out of the garden to take home for family meals.”
Among the vegetables that have been or are being grown in the garden are carrots, Brussels sprouts, onions, beets, cabbage, parsley, bell peppers and others. Fruits are also raised in the garden.
“Last year, we had tons of cantaloupes and tomatoes,” Crawford said.
She said FUMC, which is only a few blocks from Caldwell Elementary, sort of “adopted” the school a few years ago and has helped the students there in various ways. Church members often mentor the children and address their needs and concerns.
“At Christmas time, the church provides clothing and other items for many of the students,” she said.
Crawford, Curfman and York are all master gardeners and members of the Collin County Master Gardeners Association, as are some of the other volunteers.
Mrs. J. L. Lovejoy and a group of local women in October 1930 organized the McKinney Garden Club to promote an interest in gardens, their designs and management, and to encourage and help with civic plantings.
Among the special civic projects the club has supported over the years include the Collin McKinney Pioneer Home, the McKinney Library grounds, City Park, the Chestnut Square Gardens, and the Heard-Craig House Gardens.
Today’s members remain dedicated to civic improvement and beautification.
The club meets at 11:30 a.m. every second Tuesday from September through May. Informative meetings with a scheduled guest speaker and program are held at the corner of Church and Hunt streets in the Heard-Craig Hall Gallery.
Club membership is limited to 60 people, and there is a waiting list. But visitors and guests are welcome.
Circle of Trees Dedication
The Chambersville Tree Farm’s Centennial Circle of Trees, consisting of more than 100 native and adapted trees of North Texas, will be formally dedicated at 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 13. The tree farm is located four miles north of McKinney off F.M. 543 near Weston.
The project is a combined conservation effort between the Chambersville Tree Farm and the Boy Scouts of America’s Lone Star District, which includes 56 Cub Scout and Boy Scout units located in McKinney, Anna, Blue Ridge, Farmersville, Melissa and Princeton.
This planned conservation and educational program includes the Chambersville Tree Farm providing more than 100 native and adapted trees for planting, with the Lone Star District’s scouting units providing the youthful manpower to assist in the planting, trail development, and perpetual maintenance of the tree circle.
The Centennial Circle of Trees is a Collin County Scouting conservation effort to help commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America, which was founded in 1910. Through their efforts in the project, local Scouting youth can learn more about nature, forestry, wildlife and water conservation while assisting in an educational program that will be available to local school districts, youth organizations and the public, for tours of the site.
When completed in 2011, the Centennial Circle of Trees will consist of more than 125 different tree species that can grow in the North Texas blackland prairie soils. Tree Farm officials plan to have at least 80 trees planted and identified when the tree circle formally opens Nov. 13.
For more information and directions to the Chambersville Tree Farm, visit www.chambersvilletreefarms.com.
Arbor Day Feature: Happy Trees, Roses Thrive at Organic Tree Farm – By Beth Shumate
McKinney Convention & Visitors Bureau, 321 N. Central Expwy, Ste 101, McKinney TX 75070, (214) 544-1407, 888-649-8499
McKinney Convention & Visitors Bureau
McKinney, TX — The trees at Chambersville Tree Farms are pampered, receiving only the best food, living conditions and a scenic view with wide open spaces to spread their branches. What more could a tree ask for, especially during a week when the nation is celebrating Earth Day and Arbor Day
Chambersville Tree Farms, Collin Countys only completely organic tree farm, sits on a 10-plus acre section of Dean Oswalds 266 acres a mere 10 minutes northwest of McKinney. The remainder of the acreage is filled with rolling wooded hills, ponds, lush iris and rose bushes.
Everything we do is organic. We dont use any herbicide, and we harvest rain water from the roof of the barn, Oswald says, pointing to several large cisterns located behind the barn.
This water is added to liquid drawn from the farms compost mixture of bark and dairy cow manure.
We only use dairy cow compost, never any sludge or anything containing human waste.
Oswald points to a good-sized pond across from rows of magnolia trees.
That pond collects water, too. Its 15 feet deep and its full now, as it was last year with all the rains, but I mowed the bottom of that pond during the drought of 2006. That drought nearly killed us, Oswald said.
The farm, which Oswald bought in the late 1990s and opened in 2004, shows no sign of suffering this year, though. In fact, Oswald and his crew of about a dozen are busy this spring expanding the tree portion of the farms to around 15 acres.
Were adding new fields and setting up additional irrigation, Oswald said, stopping to inspect some new rows of bald cypress trees part of his crew were working with.
The crew members were removing nearly 6-foot tall trees from plastic pots and placing them in the special white fabric pots favored at the farm for the way they stimulate and support healthy root growth.
Working at a steady pace, crew members placed the pots a carefully-measured distance apart, filling them with rich soil from the conveyer belt of a large trailer. Once new rows are complete, a sophisticated tubing system is put into place, running along the rows and directing the organic drink into the trees.
Larger trees are repotted into planter boxes the farm crew custom makes in the shop on the premises. These are located in the more mature tree section of the farm.
The trees raised at the farm were not grown from seeds here, but are instead brought in from other farms as small trees, Oswald and his farm manager Chad Simmons, a degreed biologist, explained. Both men share interesting stories about some of the unique varieties found on the farm, including a prehistoric-era tree found in a Chinese monastery many years after it was thought to be extinct.
The Chambersville Tree Farms offer every imaginable type of free, from a wide variety of crape myrtles, oaks, elms, magnolias and a large grove of varying sizes of Japanese maples.
This Burr Oak is like the tree we donated to the [City of McKinneys ceremonial] Arbor Day celebration [on Saturday, April 19], Simmons said, grabbing hold of one of the potted burr oaks that towered over his head.
The farm also sells a wide variety of rose bushes, none of which are grafted, but rather are all original root stock, Oswald explained.
During a recent foot-tour of the operation, Oswald and Simmons both stop to answer questions from visitors to the farm. Oswald also field questions about another of his points of pride the Chambersville Heritage Rose Garden, which sits on a hillside of his property, surrounded by woods not far from the rows of trees in his tree farm. This rose garden, a regular meeting spot for rose enthusiasts, is one of only four such gardens in the U.S, and will soon feature a gazebo. A large national gathering of rose enthusiasts plans to meet here in October.
The Chambersville Tree Farms is open to the public on weekends and some days of the week. Call ahead to (214) 295-1058 or check hours on the farm Web site, www.chambersvilletreefarms.com. The Web site also provides clear instructions for getting to the farm. The picturesque, relaxing 10 minute drive out FM roads 543 and 206 is well worth the trip for a visit to some of the happiest trees in Collin County.
For more information, contact: MCKINNEY CONVENTION & VISITORS BUREAU
Beth Shumate, Communication Services Manager
About McKinney CVB: The McKinney Convention & Visitors Bureaus vision is to generate economic impact by promoting and developing McKinney as a premiere destination for business and leisure travelers, so they fully experience McKinneys historic charm and friendly, unique atmosphere.
Due to construction on Highway 75, please 