The auction taking place on October 4th in a nursery garden in rural France, 60km from Angers and the Loire, is almost certainly unique. There will be 210 lots of rare and collectible trees from the ten-acre (four-hectare) nursery at Domaine des Rochettes, which has been lovingly created by a friendly but formidable French woman named Ghislain de Preaulx-Carlo.

Francis Briest, of Artcurial Briest-Poulain-F.Tajan, a Parisian auction house, believes it to be the first tree sale in Europe or the United States. The auction's only distant precedent was Sotheby's sale of Wollemi pines, newly discovered survivors of the Jurassic period, in Sydney in 2005, when the top lot of 20 young trees fetched A$149,187 ($125,000).

If the top estimates are met, someone will pay €20,000 ($29,000) for an unusually tall Japanese maple, which produces vivid red flowers. Topiary experts have pruned and trimmed box, yew, and cherry trees or shrubs into spires, columns and round bushes topped by thin spires. The highest estimate for one of these is €15,000. "My buyers are all fantastic people," says Ms Carlo, "but they have to have money, that's for sure."

Ms Carlo began her nursery, which she believes unique in Europe, 40 years ago. Her father had just died, and her husband suggested that she needed to make some money for the upkeep of the estate. She is an autodidact; she studied nurseries in Britain and on the continent to discover what they were not doing so that she might fill a gap.

She began with a serious collection of old camellias, and there will be plenty of these in the sale (the best of them are estimated at €9,500). When her clients asked for rhododendrons and azaleas she went to Srinagar in India to seek them out. Then she went on to New Zealand and Australia to buy some of the more exotic species featured in the auction.

Some of Ms Carlo's trees have been growing in the nursery for 25 years. One Japanese maple is 100 years old, stands 7.5 metres (24.6 feet) tall and weighs 4,000kg (8,800 pounds). All her trees and bushes are dug up every three to six years and the roots are trimmed before replanting, so that they grow accustomed to being moved. One of the big trees was recently transported from France to Switzerland by helicopter. The box trees are trimmed twice and the yews thrice yearly.

Mr Briest identified three groups of buyers. There are public gardens looking for unusual specimens; landowners who lack the patience to grow a tree from scratch and want to plant fully grown specimens; and rare-tree collectors. He is optimistic about the sale; 3,000 catalogues have been distributed and a dozen telephone lines installed to take bids. He expects a crowd of 500 at the nursery and hopes that 100 of them will be bidders. Until now Ms Carlo has chosen her customers: "If I don't like them, I don't sell," she says. She is reluctant to admit it, but by putting her trees up for auction, they might be bought by people she would not like.

There will be some trees left in the nursery after the sale. "I love the trees. They are my children," she says, and she calls her garden "my little paradise". Her family thinks it is time to sell up completely. "But I always decide that if I am going to sell, I will do it the day after tomorrow." She is not ready to leave her little paradise just yet.

Picture credit: Jean-Paul Gislard

(The Art.view column appears every week on Economist.com.)