Counting 100,000 Trees: Fall Inventory at Eagle Lake
On: September 16, 2025
By: Eagle Lake Nurseries
Every fall, before the ground freezes, our team walks the fields and counts the trees. All of them.
Across our farm sites east of Strathmore there are roughly 100,000 trees in the ground at any one time: caliper trees in every stage of production, from newly planted liners to trees ready to be dug this fall or next spring.
Not all of them are for sale this year. Many are still growing toward the size a landscape contractor or municipality will specify, which for a caliper tree can take years. But every one of them is counted.
Inventory is slow, careful work.
Crews move row by row, recording species, cultivar, caliper and condition, and flagging anything that needs attention.
The numbers go straight into the availability lists our customers use to plan next season’s projects. When a landscape architect specifies forty 60-millimetre lindens for a spring planting, the answer to “do you have them” starts in these fields in September.
It is also one of the best weeks of the year to be in the field. The trees have finished growing, the colour is starting, and you can see a season’s work all at once.
