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Turning a Newly Planted Tree?

9 years ago

Hey folks,

I just had an 8' Japanese Maple tree installed yesterday. It's a perfect tree except for this one bare side, but it was going in front of a fence, so I thought "perfect!". Despite me telling the installers very explicitly to install it with the bare side towards the fence, they instead installed it with the bare side highly exposed to the backyard. So to fix, this coming weekend I'd like to dig it up and turn it so the bare side faces the fence.

It was installed very shallow and they removed most of the dirt from the root ball, so I'm confident it shouldn't be difficult. But I'm concerned that doing this could be a "shock" to the tree. Would it? Like the initial planting was a "shock" and now doing this would be a "double shock" and thus dangerous to the tree. Would this be the case? Could I possibly kill it if I do it? Or should this be safe?

Thanks!

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Comment (1)

Toronado3800 Zone 6 St Louis
9 years ago
Interesting. I do share your concern and like your term double shock. Especially for a July transplant. Sounds like they planted it right though. High is better. Now its up to you to water it.

I also believe the tree will fill in naturally so you may not need to have it spun. Any chance they can give you some free mum's or a gift certificate towards a future purchase to make up for their inattention or short attention span? A shame because soo many trees are planted too deep and with burlap left on by "pros".

Oh, I have heard some folks like to plant trees with the same orientation to the sun they had growing. Maybe that's what they did.
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