JARS v64n2 - How to Move Giant Rhododendrons

How to Move Giant Rhododendrons
Ron Knight
Pender Harbour, British Columbia
Canada

Although I'm shrinking in old age, my five hundred rhododendrons just keep growing taller. And each summer, after the flush of new growth, I find some that are touching their neighbors. Such comingling of branches is strictly forbidden in my garden because it cuts down air circulation and often causes one or both plants to develop sparsely-leafed branches where they touch. Moreover, when my rhododendrons grow into each other, I can't see their nice individual shapes and I have no idea what's going on inside the tangle of co-mingled branches. Therefore, my standard for each inmate in my garden is that I must be able to walk between it and its neighbors.

When I find any large, mature rhododendrons that have broken my co-mingling rule, I inflict one of two punishments:

1. The offending branches are chopped off with my loppers. However, I'm usually not very happy with the results. The rhododendrons learn nothing; they keep on grabbing for each other and I have to repeat the punishment every summer. All I get is rhododendrons that look taller and skinnier each year and lose their attractive, natural shapes.

2. The more aggressive partner is banished and sold to someone with a new garden or bigger acreage. This sentence is my preference because it opens up the area to more light and air and generates more than enough money to fill the space with new and smaller plants.

Surprisingly, it's not that difficult to move large rhododendrons - even ones that are three or four metres tall (9–12 feet). Rhododendrons have shallow, fibrous roots and can survive even after a high percentage of their root mass has been cut off. The best time for transplanting on the West Coast is in late fall, which gives the plant time to establish new roots before the hot dry summer weather arrives.

The first time I moved a large rhododendron was 15 years ago when I decided to relocate a three metre (9 foot) tall R. 'Anna Rose Whitney' from Vancouver to Pender Harbour. There was a major problem however; my van could only accommodate a one metre (three foot) tall plant.

The solution was drastic pruning. A pair of loppers and 15 minutes of work reduced the once magnificent rhododendron to a stick with two short side branches and a few leaves. I then dug up a root-ball about one metre in diameter, pushed it onto its side, and placed a wheelbarrow, also turned on its side, against the bottom of the root-ball. (Other gardeners have told me that a furniture-moving dolly works even better for this task.) It was easy after that to push the rhododendron upright within the wheelbarrow, move both to the tail-gate of the van, and slide the plant inside.

When 'Anna Rose Whitney' arrived at Pender Harbour, I wheel-barrowed her to a rocky hillside under some Douglas fir trees. Since there was only a thin layer of moss over the bedrock, I prepared a planting mix of equal parts of mulch, and unscreened topsoil and placed 'Anna Rose Whitney' in her new home. To my amazement, she flowered again after two years, grew over the next decade to a height of three metres, and became even bushier and more beautiful than she had been in Vancouver (Figure 1 – top left; large pink flowers).

By that time, however, I had (stupidly) planted three other giant plants of 'Anna Rose Whitney' in my garden and decided to give the plant from Vancouver to a friend. He wanted it to be moved, without any reduction in height, to a spot in his garden where it would block out an unsightly view of a neighbor's yard. Since the 'Anna Rose Whitney' was planted in a location that was inaccessible to a backhoe, my friend chose to hire three professional gardeners to assist him with the move. That very wise decision allowed me to escape any heavy lifting and to take photographs of the entire operation.

The gardeners each arrived with a shiny new fiberglass-handled shovel. (I've found that a flat spade, sharpened on a grinding wheel, is excellent for digging up rhododendrons.) They first dug a trench about two metres (6 feet) in diameter around the plant. Next they poked underneath the plant as far as possible to loosen a root-ball approximately thirty centimeters (1 foot) deep (Figure 2). Then they pushed the rhododendron onto its side to release all roots from cracks in the bedrock below (Figure 3). The next step involved pulling a large plastic tarp under the root-ball as it was tilted from one side to the other (Figure 4).

A new challenge now presented itself: how to drag the massive rhododendron over a perennial border without ruining the tiny plants in its path. The solution was to create a "railway track" of wooden studs and slide the rhododendron along it, above the perennials (Figure 5). After that, it was a simple matter to repeatedly move studs from behind the rhododendron to new positions in the front and drag the tarp and plant across a lawn to the driveway (Figure 6). Once the rhododendron arrived behind the gardeners' truck, wooden studs were used to create a ramp, and the plant was pushed up into position on the flat-bed.

From the time the gardeners arrived on site, the whole process took only 50 minutes. No damage was done to the garden border, to the lawn, or to anyone's back. And now, with 'Anna Rose Whitney' gone, the neighboring rhododendrons have plenty of room to breath and less opportunity to co-mingle.

Ron Knight is a member of the Vancouver Rhododendron Society and currently serves as Director for ARS District 1 in British Columbia. His rhododendron collection is located at Caron Gardens in Pender Harbour on the Sunshine Coast.