As a homeowner, you may come across several situations in your life where you may have needed to transplant a tree. For example, you may need to move a landscape tree because you need to widen your driveway. If the tree has been in that spot for several years or more, it may be too large to move without professional help.

A fully mature tree may be too large to move successfully, but a medium-sized tree can often be moved by tree service professionals. Here's what to expect when you need to transplant a landscaping tree.

It may be a multi-visit process

For the best results, your tree professionals will likely want to prune the tree's roots a few months before the move. This process involves cutting straight down through the top layer of soil in a large circle around the tree to cut off any roots outside of the transplant zone. A tree's roots can reach out 2-3 times as far from the trunk as its branches, so it's not practical to try and move all the roots with the tree.

Root pruning will give the tree a shock, but the idea is that leaving the tree in place for several months after this will allow it to recover somewhat before transplanting. This effectively divides the transplant shock into two events, lessening the impact of each one so the tree is more likely to survive.

A lot of surrounding soil will come up with the tree

If you've planted trees from the nursery before, you've likely seen the little balls of soil they had clinging to their roots. Like those trees, your tree won't have its entire root system when it comes up out of the ground, but it will need to have a large amount of soil and roots coming up with it to give it the best chance of survival.

The circle formed by root pruning describes the approximate size of the area that will be dug out to move the tree. After the root pruning visit, make sure you don't have anything inside that area that could be damaged during the transplant (such as other landscape plants). 

The tree will need help recovering afterwards

Even with the shock of transplant split into two separate events, the relocation process is a very difficult one for any tree. The tree will need to spend the next few years re-developing its root system. You may need to support the tree with extra watering, since it now can only reach water inside the root ball it was moved with, and it may need support bracing at first as well.

As you can see, the process of moving a larger tree is much more complex than transplanting a smaller plant would be. Your tree transplant service professionals can help you develop and execute a plan to ensure your tree has the best chance of surviving the transplant process.