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This is a project that I have been day dreaming about for over a year, and the time has FINALLY come to do it! Check out my tips below on how to sucessfully move boxwoods around your yard.
Moving Mature Boxwoods to create a dog run
Let me start by saying, this is not a finished project. These Boxwood Shrubs are going to need continued love to thrive in their new location. We are moving them to create a small dog run area outside the lower lever sliding glass door that leads to our yard. This is especially important for our diabetic dog CODY. We adopted Cody a year and a half ago and about 6 months ago he developed diabetes. Caring for a dog with diabetes is so much harder than I thought it would be. It is just as frustrating and it is rewarding. But they are so adorable and completely worth all the work!!
The area that we want to enclose is landscaped with boxwoods, hydrangeas and some small fir trees by the previous owners. Although the space looked great when we bought the home, the fir trees did not survive the last couple of really harsh seasons. The heavier than normal snow in the winter caused them to split and not stand up straight. Their normally pointy structure was now flowy. The warmer than normal summers (Seattle is NOT built for 100 degree summer days!?!) caused them to be a bit dehydrated. Oops Yes, I didn’t water them when it was hotter than normal. This plant mom thing is still new to me. We needed to pull the dead fir trees out. We have some more in the front yard too, but that will need to be another post.
There were a couple of locations in our yard we could have moved the boxwoods. Now is probably a good time for me to mention we have 1.25 acres, that is mostly “naturally” landscaped. Maintaining a Naturally Landscaped yard was one of the selling points for buying a home with a large yard. Little did we know … natural does not mean easy. But again, that is for another post. Once we decided that we should move them to a flower / hedge bed in front of my husband’s shop / music studio. Oh yeah, that was also a selling point for this home. Okay there were LOTS of selling points and boxes that were checked with this home. I am just glad that after 5 years here I am getting more serious about getting this yard in tip top shape and starting true veggie and flower gardens. More to come on that soon!!
Getting my hands dirty and rearranging plants and watching them grow in my yard has been one of the BEST things for my mental health.
The area we decided on was also a wreck from the extreme seasons we have been having. It had become overgrown with Salal, and the fir trees were dying. So I dug it all up. If you have been reading along for a while you know (or maybe you don’t know yet … you can read more about my mental health here), I struggle to keep things tidy. But once something is tidy there is a wave of comfort, joy, relaxation I don’t know what to call it. Dare I say Happiness? That washes over me. And this project did JUST that. I took that overgrown flower bed and ripped EVERYTHING out of it. The space was clean, and it felt refreshing.
I did get to save a raspberry bush from the overgrown flower bed
While battling the salal and the final roots of the fir trees in the boxwoods new home, I found a small raspberry starter I had planted a couple years ago! I have to save it. So I did. I planted near a holly bush in hopes the deer will not beat me to the berries.
Now came the time to move the boxwoods. I started by digging a foot or so away from the trunk of the boxwood. I didn’t want to get too close to the trunk of the boxwood as I didn’t want to hurt any roots. I knew I needed to transplant as many healthy roots as possible if I wanted the transplant to be successful. These boxwood roots were longer than expected! Which is why they are so healthy and were able to handle the extreme weather we have experienced the last couple of years.
Once we got everything dug up, we placed each boxwood on it’s side in the location we thought we would plant it. We did this to make sure they were spaced apropriately. These boxwoods have not all been treated equally. And you can tell, by how each branch “reached” for the sun. We tried to give them some space inbetween, but also knew we wanted them to grow together to form a larger hedge.
DON’T FORGET TO FEED & WATER YOUR PLANTS IN THEIR NEW HOME !!
Once the box woods were in their new homes, we covered them with Mircle Gro – Garden Soil. Plus we feed them Vigoro Tree and Shrub Fertilizer. We watered everyday, until the rain came, and then we let mother nature do it for us. Come back for updates!
