How to Send Them Packing

It was moving day a few weeks back in the Smaus garden. As part of my backyard remodel, I decided to rearrange some fairly big plants, as if they were living room furniture. These plants were clearly growing in the wrong spots--in too much shade, or sun, or where they would soon block paths or views from windows. Moving fairly big plants is doable, though a little more involved and a lot more strenuous than dragging the sofa to a different location.

This is something that should be done in winter, between late November and February, while plants are dormant or barely growing. At other times of the year it is difficult to impossible to move good-sized plants, at least without professional help.

People often ask me if I know of a nursery that will dig up plants and pay for the privilege of carting them away. The answer is no, because most plants are far too common or difficult to move, so nurseries are almost never interested.

Still, I happen to know that a dogwood in my yard is not a common tree, so I called a nursery and asked if they wanted to buy a slightly used ‘Cloud Nine’ dogwood, a variety that does reasonably well in California. This special variety of an East Coast native makes a handsome smallish, deciduous tree that covers itself in early spring with big white flowers (which are actually flower-like bracts).

I had rather foolishly planted one too close to a new addition a few years back. I had been desperate to hide all the new stucco, but now I knew the dogwood had to go. If I left it there any longer, its branches would rip at the shingles on the roof during winds and the trunk would be pushing against the wall. It had already dented a gutter during one good blow.

I really searched our rather small yard for a place to put it but could find none, so I worked out a deal with Burkard Nursery in Pasadena--where I had originally bought the tree--for some store credit in exchange for the dogwood, which I dug up myself. It was fairly easy to remove because it wasn’t that old and is one tree known to have shallow roots.

I dug around and under the dogwood and then rocked it loose. One of my sons who was visiting helped me hoist it out of the ground (he expects things like this on his visits). The root ball was about 3 feet across and a foot deep, really small for a tree, but heavy. We put it on some burlap and tightly bound the root ball in burlap and rope.

The nursery guys came by a few days later to pick it up, and when I told a friend that I had actually sold my dogwood, she looked astonished and said that maybe I had found a second career selling “certified pre-owned trees.” Too bad not all trees are so easy to dig up or sell.

I dug up and moved other plants, including a big camellia, nearly 5 feet tall, that had been growing for about four years in front of a window. Several weeks later it looks just fine in its new spot against a blank wall. I could have simply cut down the old and planted new, but I really couldn’t get rid of this camellia, since it has the same name as my daughter, Ramona, and it is a pink variety that is no longer easily found.

Camellias are also shallow-rooted, which is why they are easy to dig and move, at least while they are young. I dug around this one with a spade, making a circle about 2 1/2 feet across, then leaned back on the spade and popped the root ball out of the ground. The soil was still damp (not soggy) from recent rains, so it was perfect for digging in, and the camellia came out with only a little effort because the roots went less than a foot deep.

I also dug up some giant clumps of clivia. These I moved to the very shady spot where the camellia had been. Clivias can grow in very deep shade, even a cave, according to one garden pundit. And they’re short enough to not block the window, ever.

The clivias had a few surprisingly deep roots, which might explain why they can get by with so little water. The center of each clump seemed to have one extra-fat tap root that went down farther than I could dig, so I just sliced it with the spade, the reason one keeps the leading edge of a spade sharpened. Most of the roots, however, were quite shallow and easy to pull up.

With a spading fork, I split the big clumps apart, plunging the fork into the root mass and wiggling it back and forth until the roots separated and I had several clumps. I lugged these over to where the camellia had been.

Next, I dug up some overgrown clumps of a nice medium-sized agapanthus. I divided and replanted some of these but also tossed tons out, since I had found some really nifty plants of a variegated kind at the nursery, which were sure to look a lot more interesting in this slightly shaded corner of the garden. And I dug up several roses and moved them to sunnier spots in the garden. Roses are ridiculously easy to move while they are dormant in the middle of winter.

With the plants rearranged, I used the store credit to acquire 529 pounds of New York cobblestones. According to the building materials supplier, these roughly rectangular chunks of granite had once paved the streets of old New York City. Similar cobblestones are occasionally seen under the asphalt of downtown Los Angeles.

In my backyard I am going to use the old cobbles to pave small sections of a spanking-new patio. Most of the patio I have planned for the backyard will be covered with the same plain concrete stepping stones we’ve used elsewhere in the garden, so the rough granite will introduce occasional spots of texture into the smooth expanses of concrete. Right now the cobblestones are stacked against a wall. Admiring my modest pile, I can’t help thinking that swapping a young tree--that now waits at the nursery with a $275 price tag for a new owner--for a 500-pound-plus stack of old cobblestones was a pretty good deal. Maybe I am onto something here.

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Robert Smaus recently retired as garden editor of The Times. He can be reached at rsmaus@earthlink .net.