Flood Plain Tree Choice

Water is not a threat to land void of permanent structures. However, fast moving water is a threat as it washes away soil from an already low lying land.

There are no inexpensive solutions to fix flood plains and large earthwork projects are mostly prohibitively expensive.

Our nursery location is a floodplain, about 20 Acres of our land floods with about 3’ of water when the daily rainfall in our area reaches around 2.5”, especially so if the ground is already saturated with water. The flooding will last only about 24 hours, so the water level rises rapidly and lowers just as fast. Our land pools together about 2.5 Million square Feet of water in about 24 hours which also exits our land at the same speed.

From the debris spread on our land after a flood, we can clearly see where the water found no resistance and moved with a high speed. Trees and shrubs provide the resistance to slow the water’s flow speed over the ground and force the water to move through the creek bed. The result is deeper creek bed and higher ground level.

At our nursery in Stanton we have planted around 100 Weeping Willows and over 500 Dappled Willow shrubs and we will at least double these numbers in 2025. They thrive in a wet environment and slow the movement of water, thereby slowing our land erosion.