Making a living from just 16 hectares when your crop takes eight or more years to mature sounds fanciful.
But tree farmers Barbara and James McGeoch have built a thriving international business on their tiny farm at Ravensbourne near Toowoomba in Queensland.
They sell mature trees to clients with the budget to pay for height and impact.
Price tag for a tree?
Mature trees are not cheap, costing up to $4,000 for young eight-year-old trees, with older ones nudging $10,000 and beyond.
The farm's regular crane operator, Doug Gillies, is no longer surprised at how much people will pay.
"We live in a society these days where there is a fair bit of cash flow around and people want an instant garden so … that's the way it's done," he said.
The McGeochs specialise in natives and camellias suitable for many regions around the country.
She said councils throughout western Queensland wanting tough shade trees were regular buyers.
"They obviously need trees that are very tough and will survive in extreme environments, and after a period of time they may not get as much watering as they would have initially received," she said.
The McGeochs' old dairy farm is a perfect tree nursery, with fertile volcanic-basalt soils up to 10 metres deep, a 1,600-millimetre annual rainfall, with an elevation just shy of 800 metres.
"You can grow anything from potatoes to strawberries here … forget about trees," Mr McGeoch joked.
Exporting trees around the world
The couple started the business in 2002 after owning a plant nursery for many years.
Their first export market was Japan, which Mr McGeoch said set them up for success selling to other countries.
After signing contracts with Disney to supply trees for theme parks in China and Hong Kong they set up nurseries in China and Thailand.
While Mr McGeoch ran the overseas operation, Barbara ran the Australian end which included sourcing trees from other growers.
"We had tree ferns coming out of Tasmania and I had plants growing in various locations around Australia to be shipped across to Shanghai," Mrs McGeoch said.
The couple has supplied trees to five casinos in Macau, including Crown.
The logistics sound challenging, but he insisted "nothing's really a challenge in the tree business anymore".
"As long as you can get it in a 40-foot open-top container it's quite amazing what is moved," he said.
"When we were involved in Hong Kong Disney we moved 800 very large specimens from Thailand to Hong Kong."
Thinking they had all possible markets covered, the couple was surprised when the pandemic produced a new customer — suburban homeowners craving privacy.
A Brisbane couple that bought nearly 20 nine-metre trees to screen out neighbours did not get much change from $80,000.
Although the McGeochs are in their 70s they are not slowing down.
They have moved into the Middle East with a 100-hectare nursery on the Red Sea and are planning a second which will be three times bigger.
"There's another nursery we've been looking at with the Riyadh Royal Commission that's starting a major operation to support the 2030 vision of greening Riyadh," Mr McGeogh said.
Riyadh Green is one of the world's biggest urban forestation projects with a goal to plant 7.5 million trees in the city by 2030 to increase livability and reduce temperatures by up to 2 degrees Celsius.
Closer to home, Mrs McGeoch enjoys walking around public spaces and seeing trees grown out on their farm.
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