Before I actually wrote this article I thought long and hard as to whether other gardeners would actually believe my story or if I should try to change some of the detail to make it sound more believable. In the end I decided to protect its integrity and just tell it as it happened.
It was a hot summer afternoon in the middle of December which had been preceded by a winter and spring with well below average rainfall. You’d have thought that transplanting a semi established shrub would be the last thing a gardener with any ounce of credibility would consider on a day like that.
Well in this case I’m not sure if I had a moment of madness or I was suffering from a bout of extreme optimism but I still look back today and find the story I’m about to tell quite amazing.
The shrub in question was a Grevillea Caloundra Gem (G. Banksii x ‘Coochin Hill or so the label said) that I’d planted right at the front of the garden bed just two years earlier. It had grown to a height of about 2 m and was doing quite well. The problem for me was that despite the lack of rainfall it was doing just a little bit too well and was starting to hide the slower growing plants behind it. So the only solution for me was to shift it to another place alongside a fence where it would serve much better as screening plant.
Now I’d transplanted a few Australian native plants before and had a fairly good success rate but I’d never tried to transplant one that was this well established. I’d also never tried this exercise before without any prior preparation and especially on a day that was so unsuitable it wasn’t funny. At the time though for some reason I didn’t even consider any of this and just launched straight into the task. The only preparation I’d done before hand was to dig a new hole for around the other side of the house and enlist the help of my father to help carry it to its new home.
Before I knew it I’d dug a ring around the shrub about 50 cm in diameter and managed to cut through some fairly sizable roots in the process. As a result when I looked up at the foliage it was all now drooping rather alarmingly at the ground. All of a sudden it hit me exactly what I was doing. I was killing a perfectly healthy plant and all because I didn’t like where I’d planted.
Anyway not one to give in easily and having decided that I’d passed the point of no return (which I probably hadn’t), I decided to continue. As I kept digging the circle around the plant it was becoming very obvious that the sandy loam that it was planted in was very dry and crumbly and the size of the rootball contained within the sandy loam was getting smaller and smaller. As I tried to lift the rootball out of the hole more and more of it kept breaking away. In the end I got to the stage where the size of the rootball was only about 30 cm in diameter and even this looked like it was ready to break off.
Despite this though, the only option was to continue. While all of this was happening my father had been standing back watching. He must have been wondering that if by the time I was finished there was going to be anything left to shift.
As I lifted it gingerly out of its hole my father supported the other end and we slowly carried it around to the other side of the house to its new home. Just as I was placing it into its new hole (grave?) another piece of the rootball broke off. I couldn’t believe it. Surely this was the final nail in its coffin.
What was left in the hole was a semi circle about 20 cm in diameter and looking back now as to why I just didn’t give up there and then and just throw it in the compost I’ll never know but for some reason I decided to continue with the original plan. I then got 3 large garden stakes and drove them into the ground around the plant, got some garden twine and tied it to each of the stakes for support. This held the plant into position quite nicely. The next step was to backfill what was left of the rootball and buildup a small bank around the top. I then mixed some concentrated seaweed solution into a bucket of water and then slowly poured it all around the rootball. This I kept doing until the soil was so sodden that it took quite a while for it to drain away. The idea was to saturate what was left of the rootball with the seaweed solution.
The job was now finished and standing back looking at the final result I couldn’t help but think of the 101 ways I could have done it better. The transplant was now complete and there was nothing left to do but to sit back and wait.
The next day the weather was a bit cooler and the Grevillea seemed to be holding its own. The foliage was still pointing at the ground but it didn’t seem to have gotten any worse. This to me was no consolation as I knew that when most native plants die (for whatever reason) the foliage won’t show any signs of distress until long after the roots have died, so for me I knew it was just a matter of time.
Despite this though, I continued to keep watering it with the diluted seaweed solution. The next couple of days the weather remained cooler and every day it appeared to be holding its own. Then a few days later I came out to water it and I thought that some of the foliage was actually starting to sit upright again. I wasn’t sure if it was my wishful thinking but it actually looked like it had recovered a little. The next couple of days though told the story. Slowly but surely it was starting to look well again. It was actually starting to recover. As summer turned into autumn it slowly started to put on some new growth and flower again. I left the stakes in to support it for about another year and now about 6 years later that Grevillea Caloundra Gem is still growing in that spot. It’s now about 4m tall, and flowers for nearly all of the year.
Why and how it managed to survive that shift I suppose I’ll never know. Over the years though I’ve heard many a gardening expert say the you can’t transplant Australian natives but I’ve successfully done it many times for one reason or another. On this particular occasion I did almost everything wrong but when you go about in the proper way most of the time you should have success.
If you were to ask me as to why it survived, I can only say that it is testimony to the resilience of most Australian native plants and the effectiveness of that seaweed solution.
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