Professionals have access to wholesale nurseries and growers that you, as a retail customer, do not. The quality of the trees depends entirely upon the grower as well as the knowledge of the landscaper to pick good trees. In most cases, the trees that are available at a good whole nursery put the typical retail nursery to shame. But it's highly variable.

If your landscaper is going to select the trees and even deliver them, you should expect to pay him for that.

Size of the plants is also a consideration

RE: Professionals have access to wholesale nurseries and growers that you, as a retail customer, do not. . . If your landscaper is going to select the trees and even deliver them, you should expect to pay him for that.

And what's a reasonable charge for tree shopping? If this person is a 'professional' in a meaningful sense of the word (and by that i mean someone with higher education trained to exercise judgment) then the value he or she adds is advice and knowledge - not his or her inside middle man mark up.

Ask him or her to tell you where their exclusive source is and that you would like to see the trees first so you can see if it's a value.

Plenty of 'professionals' in that business have little or no education or expertise, buy proucts at the same place you do (maybe with a discount) and want to sell you the goods to benefit from the mark up.

If you want to rely on them your only defense is to ask questions and try to see if you're getting value. I for one am happy to pay people who add value, not those who add cost.

I think the word professional is getting thrown around a lot. Getting paid isnt enough. You need a profession first, and that entails training and duties to others more important than your own profit motive. Lawyers, doctors, professors are professionals. Hookers, landscapers, and realtors are not.

I would think twice about spending that much money on Japanese maples in MN unless you have a specific microclimate that would provide a good chance at long term survival.

Generally garden centers normally don't stock caliber sized trees simply because of the money invested to have them sit until the right person comes along. It is also true don't spend money on species that may not survive the winter.

Here is a link that might be useful: Propagating Perennials

The term is of course caliper as in large caliper - referring to the size of the trunk - and not caliber, as in 50 caliber machine gun.

Except when they're dealing with trees designed to be fired from a machine gun.

;-)

monkeyk,
You have noticed how several posters have zeroed in on size and they are right, it's likely that your designer spec'd larger sizes and that justifies the higher price. In my area most wholesale yards welcome homeowners as long as they are accompanied by an account-holding contractor. Of course, its only reasonable that you will pay more for your contractor's time.
LA's as well as contractors are highly variable. They often specialize in one aspect of their profession. There are some firms in the fourth or fifth generation, highly professional and award-winning. I have also heard of some horror stories you wouldn't believe, mostly by fly-by-night operators. I'll leave it up to Averbisadverbera if he wants to elaborate on his comparison to hookers.
Sam

Thank you for all of the responses. The larger tree resoning does make sense to me. When I went to the retail nursery, they told me that they would not be getting any trees for another month, so it seems that they get their trees for the year, sell them and that's it.

Some of my research as suggested that it is better to get bare root trees than container trees, and the retail nursery that I went to sells by container size, so perhaps this is another distinguishing factor.

The larger trees would probably look nicer from the start, but my research indicates that smaller trees are more likely to survive(plus the nusery has a 2 year guarantee) plus, I could do more of the plan with less expensive trees. I'll have to weigh these as factors.

Good point from those who said to reconsider on the Japanese Maple. The Northstar cherry alternative may be the way to go.