Tree Spacing Calculator — Trees per Hectare & Acre
Plan a plantation, orchard, or reforestation project: enter your row and within-row spacing and choose a grid or triangular pattern to get trees per hectare, trees per acre, and total trees for your site.
Planting pattern
m
m
ha
10 000 m² ÷ area per tree
- 1
Area per tree (grid)
4 × 4 = 16 - 2
Trees per hectare
10,000 ÷ 16 = 625
How does this calculator work?
Trees per hectare = 10 000 ÷ (row spacing × within-row spacing) for a square grid. Triangular offset planting gives about 15% more trees for the same spacings. Enter row and tree spacing in metres to get planting density and total tree count for your site.
Formula
How this is calculated
Planting density is fundamental to forestry and orchard management — too close and trees compete for light and nutrients; too wide and land is underutilised. For a square or rectangular grid, every tree occupies a rectangle of row spacing × tree spacing metres, so planting density is simply 10 000 m² (one hectare) divided by that area.
Triangular (offset or staggered) planting puts alternate rows shifted by half the within-row spacing, so each tree is at the centre of an equilateral or isoceles triangle. The effective area per tree is row spacing × tree spacing × sin(60°) ≈ 0.866 × that of the equivalent square grid, giving about 15% more trees per hectare for the same spacings — useful for maximising density in orchards and close-spacing reforestation.
Typical spacings vary widely by purpose: shelter belts and fast-growth timber 2–3 m, standard agroforestry 4–10 m, large orchard fruits 5–12 m. The curve in the chart shows how trees per hectare falls sharply as spacing increases — a useful reference when comparing planting regimes.
Frequently asked questions
Fast-growing timber species like eucalyptus or pine are often planted at 2–4 m spacings (625–2500 trees/ha), then thinned. Hardwoods intended for larger diameter often start at 3–5 m and are thinned progressively. The goal is to balance initial density (for straight form and competition) with final crop spacing for target log size.
In a triangular offset pattern, each tree is surrounded by six equidistant neighbours, and the effective ground area per tree is about 13–15% smaller than for the same spacing in a square grid. This makes triangular planting more efficient in terms of density per unit area, which is why it is widely used in high-density orchards.
1 hectare = 2.47105 acres, so divide trees/ha by 2.47105 to get trees/acre. Equivalently, trees/acre = 4046.86 ÷ area per tree (in m²). This calculator shows both automatically.
Also known as
TG we-Calculate Editorial Team. (2026). Tree Spacing Calculator — Trees per Hectare & Acre [Online calculator]. TG we-Calculate. https://we-calculate.com/calculator/tree-spacing-calculator
TG we-Calculate Editorial Team. "Tree Spacing Calculator — Trees per Hectare & Acre." TG we-Calculate. 2026. https://we-calculate.com/calculator/tree-spacing-calculator.
TG we-Calculate Editorial Team, "Tree Spacing Calculator — Trees per Hectare & Acre," TG we-Calculate, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://we-calculate.com/calculator/tree-spacing-calculator
@misc{wecalculate_tree_spacing_calculator, title = {Tree Spacing Calculator — Trees per Hectare & Acre}, author = {{TG we-Calculate Editorial Team}}, howpublished = {\url{https://we-calculate.com/calculator/tree-spacing-calculator}}, year = {2026}, note = {TG we-Calculate} }
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