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McKinney Travel Articles
- Arbor Day Feature: Happy Trees, Roses Thrive at All-Organic Tree Farm
By Beth Shumate, Communications Manager, McKinney Convention & Visitors Bureau
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 month when the nation is celebrating Earth Day and Arbor Day?
Chambersville Tree Farms, Collin County’s only completely organic tree farm, sits on a 10-plus acre section of Dean Oswald’s 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. Also 75 acres of agriculture, currently planted in wheat, fronts the rose-lined drive to the farm from FM 206. (The farm’s main office entrance is just past this gate, on CR 971.)
“Everything we do is organic. We don’t 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 aged bark and manure compost using the farm’s compost tea machine. This Bio-Tea is Chambersville’s secret to low cost fertilizer and premium plant health. “We only use dairy cow compost [because of the more natural way they’re fed], and we never use any sludge or anything containing human waste,” Oswald explained.
A 15-foot deep pond on the farm collects rain water, too, providing an additional source of irrigation water.
The trees raised at the farm were not grown from seeds here, but are instead brought in from other farms as small trees. The Chambersville Tree Farms offer a selection of natives, as well as a great selection of naturalized trees, from a wide variety of crape myrtles, oaks, elms, magnolias and a large grove of varying sizes of Japanese maples in North Texas.
The farm also sells a wide variety of rose bushes, none of which are grafted, but rather are all original root stock, Oswald explained.
The tree farm is also home to 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 study gardens in the U.S, and will soon feature a gazebo for weddings, meetings and private parties.
The Chambersville Tree Farms is open to the public seasonally on Saturdays and by appointment during the weekday. The Chambersville Heritage Rose Garden is also open seasonally on Saturdays.
Call ahead to (214) 295-1058 or check hours on the farm web site. The web site also provides clear instructions for getting to the farm. The picturesque, relaxing 10 minute drive out FM 543 (Weston Road) to CR 206 is well worth the trip for a visit to some of the happiest, healthiest trees and roses in Collin County.
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