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As an engineer who also really loves the outdoors (forests, mountains, etc.), I find gardening to be one the most stressful activities I've ever tried. For example, I had several trees planted for privacy, and I cannot even handle watering them. There's no good recipe to follow, no fixed amount of water, just a vague instruction to dig a hole into the root ball and make sure the soil is "moist" but not "wet" or "dry". Of course, that is just like a customer saying he wants a design that "pops but is not too flashy" - a nightmare.
On top of that, there's one watering system for 7 trees, and various holes next to them have different-feeling soil; and often, different holes right next to each other by the same tree have radically different levels of moisture. Even the rain doesn't helps because arborvitae are very dense and while 2 feet from the root ball it may be almost swampy, under the tree still looks dry and I've no idea whether to water or not water them.
And that's before we get to fertilizer, pests, etc. Ugh.
And ofc unlike e.g. burning a cake, if the trees do die I'll actually feel bad. It's basically an engineering equivalent of a customer from hell who is super vague, changes specs all the time, and you have multiple bosses who disagree; and if you screw up the project people suffer. I already wish I just had a taller fence built, cause I'll have to hire someone to deal with this no doubt. They really should come up with bio-engineered "robot" trees that have an instruction manual with specific quantities of water and stuff to be applied at specific intervals... |
Anyway, since you love outdoors, you know there are trees on this earth, who handles growing without human interaction?
And they only have natural rain and groundwater. But yes they do not grow everywhere but only at a specific ground. So most of them die at young age, who were unlucky.
And with gardening you try to engineer the right conditions, but because of the complexity, you just fail so a lot of times. There are basic rules to follow and the rest is experience. So just relax about the thought that things can die because of you. That just will happen a lot with gardening.
And with your arborvitae, well for them it is mostly the soil that matters. Imagine them growing in the wild ... and then try to simulate that as much as possible. So don't panic if the ground moisture is not allways perfect, it allmost never is in the wild. The trees grow nevertheless, unless the ground is really unsuitable. And then you can adjust a bit. But mostly your trees need a lot of water it seems. And then they will grow..