It’s time to get Bare Rooted!
Customers please note: bare rooted season has kicked off for 2024 with Bare Rooted Roses as well as Bare Rooted Fruit Trees and Ornamental Trees available online and in store. More varieties coming soon.
Winter is one of our our favourite times of year, because while other nurseries slow down, we get geared up for the bare rooted plant season! Keep an eye on this page for updates about this year’s selection of bare rooted plants as they arrive.
Bare rooting is where plants are sold out of a pot, with their roots bare and free of soil. This is made possible by the cool weather and the fact that many plants are semi-dormant in winter and are happy to be moved around and stored out of a pot. You might also hear bare rooted plants referred to as field dug.
We love bare rooting! That’s because bare rooted plants become 25 – 75% cheaper at this time of year, without the associated cost of pots, soil, transport and storage. Check out this article to learn more about bare rooted plants and how to plant them.
The bare rooted plant season has come early to Melbourne this year (2024), with bare rooted roses already available online and at our Campbellfield nursery, and now fruiting and ornamental trees starting to roll in.
The exact start of the bare rooted plant season varies slightly from year to year in Melbourne and Victoria, and comes earlier than warmer states such as New South Wales. That’s because it requires a continuous period of cold weather to take the plants into dormancy, ready to be transported without soil.
Usually after the monarch’s Birthday Weekend (King or Queen) in the second week of June is where you’ll start seeing bare rooted plants appearing for sale. The fullest range is available in July. The bare rooted season wraps up when spring arrives, by which time the plants should be tucked up into nice beds of soil, ready to burst into life and get growing with the warmer weather.
Keep an eye on this page for updates about this year’s selection of bare rooted plants and when they are arriving. This includes bare rooted roses, bare rooted trees and bare rooted English Box.
Plants that can be bare rooted are mostly deciduous plants that are dormant during the winter time. While they’re “asleep” these plants don’t mind storage and transportation out of a pot. There are also a few evergreen plants, like the very popular Buxus ‘English Box’, which can be bare rooted.
Our winter 2024 range is listed below. This year so far we have bare rooted roses, some bare rooted fruit trees, bare rooted flowering and ornamental trees available online and in store. More will be added through June and July.
Chris has been selling bare rooted plants and trees for over 30 years, and when the season comes around he uses them to a customer’s advantage in his garden designs. Here’s a recent video of Chris live on Facebook discussing the history & benefits of bare root plants.
You can also check out our fact sheet on Bare Rooted (Field Dug) plants & trees to learn more about the benefits of using and planting bare rooted plants.
We’ll also be publishing guides on:
- How to plant bare rooted roses
- How to plant bare rooted trees
- Planting bare rooted English Box
- Planting bare rooted Weeping Cherry Trees
We deliver door-to-door in metro Melbourne for $34.90, or free when you spend over $300. We also deliver to many Victorian regional centres. Click here to read about our delivery service and click here to read about our FREE delivery offer!
If you live outside of our regional Victoria delivery routes, or interstate, we can post bare rooted 2ft standard roses and smaller bare root plants to you by Express Post. Please contact us if you want 2ft Standard Bare Rooted Roses posted to you.
We cannot post 3ft and 4ft roses and trees, because they are too tall. However, we can send bare rooted plants interstate by Freight. Freight costs start at around $300, so this is best for larger orders. Unfortunately, we cannot send any plants to Tasmania, WA or NT due to quarantine restrictions. Call PH: (03) 9359 3331 or Contact Us for more information.
Bare rooted English Box for sale
Coming soon in 2024.
English Box is Melbourne’s favourite small formal hedge, and in the bare rooted season it’s always our top seller! If you want to put in a box hedge, which requires planting about 5 English Box plants per metre, bare rooted season is a great time to do it due to the cost savings per plant.
Last year we had a “Jumbo Bare Rooted English Box” size, equivalent to a 10″ Pot size English Box. It was twice the size of an 8″ Pot of English Box, and half the price.
This year we hope to have some fabulous bare rooted English Box for you, once it’s time for our growers to dig them.
Bare rooted roses for sale
Bare rooted ROSES are now available online. Click here to view the entire range.
Roses are another top seller during the bare rooted season, as they are available at 25 – 50% off the normal price. For this reason it’s a perfect time to buy your roses or put in a whole rose garden. In fact, our 2ft Standard Bare Rooted roses are even cheaper than last year, despite inflation!
This year we will be offering Standard (ball-on-a-stick style) Bare Rooted Roses in dozens of colours. There is a large but limited quantity of each variety, so we suggest you order early to avoid disappointment.
Bare rooted roses are available online and in store NOW as of April 2024! See all the varieties here.
Bare rooted fruit trees for sale
The bare rooted season is a good time to get discounted fruit trees. Bare rooted fruit trees are easier fit into your car, move into place and plant. This makes it a good time to put in a mini orchard (or a maxi orchard, why not).
Last year we had a range of popular apples, pears, apricots and plums available online and in store by July. These were around half the price that you would buy fruit trees of this size in other seasons.
Don’t forget that to produce good fruit, or any fruit at all, many fruit trees need to be planted near a different variety of the same type of tree, called a pollinator. More info, including pollination information, is displayed on in the description & details of each product on our website.
Where you see the word “self-pollinating” it means that tree takes care of itself and doesn’t need to be planted near a different variety. However, these self-fertile or self-pollinating varieties do tend to produce better fruit when planted in pairs or near other varieties of the same type of tree.
Bare rooted ornamental trees & weeping trees for sale
The bare rooted season is a fantastic time to get cut price weeping, ornamental and feature trees. Most trees that are deciduous can be bare rooted, and you can expect a saving of 50 to 75%. Favourites from past years include ornamental pears, plums and cherries, plus elms, ashes, robinia, maples and more.
This is a good time to buy trees if you are planning to do an avenue planting along a driveway, create a screen along a fence or property line or if you have a large property where you require bulk trees. Large bare rooted plants are easier to move into place and plant as you don’t have to lug them around with a big heavy pot of soil attached. We also wrap our bare rooted plants and trees with potting mix instead of sawdust, so that you get something useful to mix in with your home soil and improve it a little at the time of planting.
