We had a major addition/ reconstruction on our home recently. The contractor was going to remove this Japanese Maple but it’s a beautiful tree so I hired a landscaper to transplant it to another part of the yard.
How 'recently' was this transplanted? IMO, it looks amazingly good for it's size, which speaks well of your landscaper (and those specific words are practically unheard of in the tree subs, I have to tell you); they must have dug up a massive root mass to accommodate the move, given that there's very little branch death in your pics. That some foliage is suffering is not unusual for a transplant of this size. That's a huge gold star for that landscaper. I can assure you that the great, GREAT majority of 'pros' do things like this poorly, but here we can see the root flare is exposed and evident above grade, which is just super. Any bangs and scrapes done will hopefully compartmentalize over the next several years.
You will have to continue supplemental watering over the next several years as well, while it re-establishes itself. I would encourage you to create a berm around the planting site to hold water in a reservoir so it will stay in place for the tree to use and not run off. Be very generous with water now, just as you've been doing, and consider mulching out as far around the tree as possible, to suppress grass/weed growth, which will compete with the tree. This tree needs every advantage it can get at this time. Don't pile mulch against the tree.
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u/spiceydog EXT MG 24d ago
How 'recently' was this transplanted? IMO, it looks amazingly good for it's size, which speaks well of your landscaper (and those specific words are practically unheard of in the tree subs, I have to tell you); they must have dug up a massive root mass to accommodate the move, given that there's very little branch death in your pics. That some foliage is suffering is not unusual for a transplant of this size. That's a huge gold star for that landscaper. I can assure you that the great, GREAT majority of 'pros' do things like this poorly, but here we can see the root flare is exposed and evident above grade, which is just super. Any bangs and scrapes done will hopefully compartmentalize over the next several years.
You will have to continue supplemental watering over the next several years as well, while it re-establishes itself. I would encourage you to create a berm around the planting site to hold water in a reservoir so it will stay in place for the tree to use and not run off. Be very generous with water now, just as you've been doing, and consider mulching out as far around the tree as possible, to suppress grass/weed growth, which will compete with the tree. This tree needs every advantage it can get at this time. Don't pile mulch against the tree.
Please see our wiki for other critical planting tips and errors to avoid; there's sections on watering, pruning and more that I hope will be useful to you.
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