Dan Defenbaugh | ph.360 876-2126 | cell 360 620-8529 email me

Transplanting Trees and Shrubs

Jungle-Tamer offers a solution, a solution very few companies in the entire Puget Sound offer. We have two pieces of equipment for transplanting trees and shrubs. The first is a tree spade - a hydraulically operated unit with four huge spade-like shovels. This unit is capable of digging a 42-inch diameter rootball, which means it will handle most shrubs and trees up to about 7 inches in diameter.

To date, the largest tree we have transplanted was a 25-foot tall double (two trunks) Pacific Dogwood. Each trunk was 3-4 inches in diameter. The tree was located in the woods and not visible to anyone. We moved the tree to an area visible from the home's kitchen window and rear patio. The homeowner can now enjoy the enhanced landscape with springtime flowers and the yellow fall color.

While our tree spade is the only brand specifically designed to work in confined areas, such as planter areas next to your house, there are some plants with dense low foliage which require a different type of equipment for transplanting. For this we use the "digger." It is designed to go in low under the foliage and lift the plant and rootball.

Whichever implement we use, the transplanting process is quite simple. The new hole is dug to the proper size and depth, the target plant is lifted and then placed in the new hole. The only manual labor involved is adding fertilizer and/or soil amenities and using some of the excess soil to build a berm around the trunk to facilitate ease of watering. The excess soil is returned to the plant's original site.