MÉLANIe'S GARDENS

About relocation, preparation, and sensing what’s really happening underground.

Last weekend, Grimsby got a thorough soak. Saturday, it rained incessantly, and even though we’re now getting temperatures in the 20’s, the nights are still relatively cool. This all means it’s a pretty good time to transplant shrubs.

Timing shrub transplanting with rain events and avoiding heat waves gives shrubs an establishment period, which is always a good idea.

There are many reasons to move a shrub. One could be just to move it from the location it’s in because it’s not the shrub you’re looking for aesthetically. But you may also notice that it’s not adapted well to the conditions there. Perhaps it’s a sun-loving shrub, but the overhead canopy has grown in. Sometimes you just want to move it to a better location because you prefer having it somewhere else.

When it comes to shrub transplanting, preparation is key. Shrubs are larger woody structures, so some of these notes also apply to trees. There is always a chance of failure if they don’t get transplanted correctly. A shrub has evolved to live in a specific situation, and if you transplant it into a situation that it’s not adapted to, it may take a moment for it to get used to the new situation and adapt.

The first step is to have a look at the shrub you’re looking to transplant. How big is it? Where is it located? How easy is it going to be to dig out? What kind of soil is it in?

Then have a look at where you’re looking to transplant it to. You may just be removing the shrub from the location it’s in and not have a specific place in mind. In that case, you may be potting it up temporarily.

Here we’re talking about shrub transplanting, not shrub removal, which are similar in some ways, but transplanting wants to preserve the life of the shrub.

Look at the transplanting location. Why do you want to move it there? Is it a good location? Is the sun similar? Is the soil similar? Is the water similar? Or are they actually an improvement on the shrub’s conditions?

Before transplanting a shrub, it’s important to note the conditions that it’s already in. Are you in a sheltered space? Are you in a space that has little or a lot of direct sunlight or direct wind? How is that different from the condition that you’re moving your shrub into?

In Grimsby there are vastly different soil types. While some areas have free-draining sand that make water disappear a moment after watering, there are also gardens in almost pure heavy clay where water pools and roots behave very differently.

Once you’ve considered the shrub and its destination, prepare the new location. Shrub transplanting can be a delicate matter, and you want to make sure that it has a place to go that’s well prepared before you start digging.

Dig a hole that’s a little bit larger than you’re estimating the root ball to be. This is also a good time to check for drainage issues. Once you dig the hole, pour some water in and see if it drains away, just so you have an understanding of the new location. The water also absorbs into the surrounding soil, which will help the transplanted shrub once it’s moved.

If you’re transplanting into a pot, make sure you have the pot ready, possibly a couple of different pot sizes if you’re not sure what the root ball is going to look like, and some soil for the bottom of the pot to create a cushion for the root ball.

Before you begin digging, it’s also important to have access to water. A full watering can and possibly a hose with a hose-end attachment that lets you control the water at the destination point. The easier the access to water, the better.

It’s also important to have a moving mechanism ready. Whether it’s a wheelbarrow, a tarp, or a temporary pot if you’re going a bit of a distance, it’s useful to have it ready so the move is seamless.

Now for the actual shrub removal.
In terms of tools, I find it useful to have a sturdy shovel. Depending on the size of the shrub, it could be a small one or a large one, but usually a large one works better, since it gathers a larger soil base. I also use a garden fork.

To begin, take your garden fork and poke around the perimeter of the shrub. Dig in about six inches to a foot away from the shrub and push the fork down and then away, like a lever. Just see where the roots are and how well attached the shrub is to its location. The fork is essentially a sensing tool.

Sometimes a fork is sufficient to lift the shrub, especially if it’s in sandy soil and it’s not very deeply rooted. If that’s the case, gently loosen the soil with the fork around the perimeter of the shrub, going around it once first, and then on the second pass around, try to push down a little bit harder and lever it out of place.

The advantage of using a fork here is that it gives you a little bit more flexibility in terms of preserving the root system as much as possible. The more roots you damage or slice off, the more roots the shrub will need to remake to adapt to the new environment at its current size.

Oftentimes the fork is not sufficient. Sometimes the roots are extensive and need to be severed at some point.
If you know where the roots are with the fork, you can carefully sever them by hand with secateurs or loppers. The more you can preserve, the better. You can also take a shovel and dig in further out from the shrub, possibly a foot and a half or two feet away from the crown of the shrub, from where the trunk meets the roots.

The shovel is also a sensing tool. You’ll notice when it slices through roots. Sometimes it will hit and get stuck on larger roots. It is helpful to preserve as much of the root system as possible, but sometimes it is impossible, especially if it’s an established shrub that has been in a location for a long time.

When you sense a larger root, pause the digging and investigate a little bit. Take a hand hoe, such as a ho-mi hoe, or a hori-hori knife, and carefully loosen some of the soil around that root. If you can follow it for a little while, you can choose a better place to prune it.

If you give it a clean pruning cut, it will ensure a quicker recuperation period than if you just hack at it with a shovel. Plants are resilient and can often survive haphazard cuts, and they often do in nature as well. However, the more you can do to help the plant during the transplant, especially if it’s a tricky one, the less the plant has to do to recover on the other end.

Once the shrub is loosened, lift it carefully into your wheelbarrow, bucket, tarp, or temporary pot. Sometimes a small shrub can just be lifted with the shovel, but often it helps to cradle the root ball or get a good grip at the base of the plant.

Shrubs come in all sorts of forms and sizes and shapes, and the root balls are all vastly different. What lifts with one hand in one situation may require two people in another.

Once you’ve taken the shrub out of the ground, this becomes a critical time. The root ball is exposed to air and sunlight, both of which roots are not accustomed to. If you can move it into a shaded spot, that can make an immediate difference to the speed of wilting.

The root ball also immediately begins drying up. Each visible root has many microroots attached to it that are responsible for most nutrient and water intake. Those microscopic filaments are very susceptible to exposure.

If you can, soaking the root ball in water will immediately help prevent further decay in those microscopic roots. This is where your prepared water source comes in handy. Once you remove the shrub into its temporary location, whether it’s a pot, tarp, or wheelbarrow, feel free to douse it generously.

This is why transplanting after a heavy rain like the one we had Saturday is very advantageous. The soil is already soaked and the cooler temperatures are already preventing a significant amount of damage from being done to the root ball.

If you’re repotting it, place it into a pot slightly larger than the root ball, top it up with soil, give it a very thorough soak, and set it aside in a protected shaded location.

If you’re moving the shrub elsewhere on site, move it carefully into the prepared hole. Ideally the hole is already moist from testing drainage earlier, but there shouldn’t still be a lake sitting in it. If there is, you may need to reconsider your location, unless your shrub is tolerant of soggy conditions, such as a dogwood. Check the hole again. Is it the right size? Is it too deep or too shallow?

Once you set the shrub in the hole, check how high or low it sits about ground level. What you’re looking for is for the point where the shrub’s trunk(s) meet its roots. That point should sit slightly proud, maybe two inches above the soil line. If it’s below the soil line, the shrub may suffer dieback or molding around the woody stems over time. There are some exceptions, such as roses, but overall, plant ‘em high, they won’t die, plant ‘em low, they won’t grow.

Once the shrub is sitting properly, start packing soil around it. Make sure there are no significant air pockets below or around the shrub. Feel free to get your hand in there and poke your fingers around the root ball to make sure the soil is packed well enough to avoid significant air holes.

Then give the shrub a thorough soak. You can shape the soil around the shrub to create a little lip to contain the water and make watering easier. Give it one or two watering passes, depending on how quickly the soil absorbs water.

Now that the transplanting is done, keeping an eye on the shrub until it is established is crucial. Established means here a successful full year, with possible new growth a year from your transplanting time. The first few days and couple of weeks are most important, but so are difficult weather events, such as heat waves.

Over the next days and weeks, make sure the root ball stays consistently moist, especially if there’s a heat wave coming. If the site is particularly dry, like many sandy locations in Grimsby, then you will want to water every couple of days and make sure it gets a deep soak every time.

After the first week or two, the shrub will usually tell you if anything is significantly wrong. If all is well and there is no major immediate dieback, watering can often be reduced. Every site is different, so this is not a blanket statement. It’s more of an observation that the first few days are critical, and then as time passes, the shrub generally needs less care.

All woody plant material takes about a year to become fully established. The first year may require a little bit more watering, especially the first summer as we’re heading into the hotter days.

What I’ve described is an ideal shrub transplant. Many situations are not ideal. The shrub could have roots wedged between giant boulders. Major root loss may occur. Watering may be difficult, because the new location is remote.
What you want to keep in mind is always doing the most that you can within the limitations to help the shrub.

If you see some death in the shrub, possibly loss of certain branches or foliage, it does not necessarily mean that your shrub is dead. Be patient. A shrub can die back to the ground and come back from the roots. Do not prune dead-looking branches away immediately. Some may still be alive, and just need a moment.

Observe and see what happens. After a while, remove what’s really dead. Keep what’s even half alive. Give the shrub some grace before any significant shaping or pruning happens.

Within a year, the shrub will clearly tell you what it’s keeping and what it doesn’t need anymore in the new location.

This is by no means an exhaustive exploration of shrub transplants, but I hope it gives you an idea of how to go about it. If you’re prepared, it can be simple and easy.

About underlying structure, stability and body sustainability

At this point in May, around the May long weekend, a lot of the heavier garden work begins. Moving planters, shifting pots, lifting and carrying things that have sat all winter. Earlier this week, I was preparing some of the larger planters around the garden for the season ahead. Emptying old soil, refreshing them, moving them back into place.

This time of year, a lot of gardeners begin to feel it physically. Sometimes it is the shoulders. Sometimes the lower back. Sometimes numbness in the arms or stiffness in the hips. Gardening is physical work, often repetitive work, and over time small imbalances accumulate.

For me, part of preparing for the gardening season is returning to my yoga practice. Years ago, I began with simple sun salutations as a warm-up. At first, even that felt difficult. Over time, I slowly added more postures and movements. A little more one year. A little more the next.

What interested me was not flexibility, but awareness. Each posture taught me something about how my body worked together. At one point I realized I had been standing mostly toward the outsides of my feet. Learning to ground more evenly through my heels completely changed my forward bend. Later, I began to understand the relationship running through the second toe, through the knee, through the hip. Small adjustments changed everything.

Over time, the practice expanded into a longer warm-up before gardening work. Not because I was trying to become advanced at yoga, but because the movements helped me notice things before they became problems.

Eventually, after years of adding more and more postures, I found myself returning again to the simplest thing: standing.

Equal standing.

Not frozen standing, but balanced standing. Weight distributed evenly across the feet. Toes relaxed. Knees soft. Hips neither tucked nor pushed back. The spine lengthening upward while the feet continue downward into the ground.

Breathing there.

What surprised me was how much work was hidden inside what looked like almost nothing.

The shoulders settle. The ribs soften. The neck releases upward. The head balances more easily. The body begins stacking itself instead of fighting itself.

And once I began to understand that standing position more clearly, I started seeing it everywhere else. In bending. In lifting. In carrying soil. In pruning. In reaching forward into a shrub. Every movement depended on what came before it.

Many systems approach this differently. Yoga is only one approach among many. But the underlying experience seems broadly shared: understanding the structure underneath the movement allows the movement itself to become easier, steadier, more sustainable over time.

Around this same time every year, the Niagara Escarpment disappears beneath green growth. Through winter, you can clearly see the structure underneath: trunks, branches, the shape of the land itself. But by late May, the canopy fills in and the underlying structure becomes almost invisible.

Still, the canopy depends on it completely.
Lately I have been thinking that much of gardening work is like that. The visible motions: lifting, planting, pruning, carrying, depend on quieter structures underneath them. Often invisible ones.

Every morning, before gardening work, I now return to simple sun salutations again. Not because they are complicated, but because they remind me of the underlying relationships carrying everything else.

The summer canopy rests on winter structure. Movement rests on standing.

About spring cleanup, trying different things, and the right tool for the right job. (more…)