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How hard to move a 40' tall tree?

14 years ago

I have a fairly nicely wooded lot. In the front of the homepad there are some nice trees (beautiful 90' tall pine and some 40' gum? trees), however these trees are not spaced as nicely as I would like. Also, there are some gum, and maple (I believe) trees in the back that I would be removing (to give me a nice big open area.) The trees in the back have a similar height, canopy, and fullness of branches and leaves, so they would look normal with the front trees.

The best case would be to move a few of these trees from the back to the front . I have no idea how hard it would be to do this, but certainly it should be possible to dig up the tress with the assocaited root system and soil, put it on a dump truck, and replant it elsewhere. I suppose it could be rather expensive as well, but as long as it would not be too expensive, it could be an option for me.

During the last hurricane, a few gum trees got knocked down from the roots, and the root volume did not look all that large (for a 40' tree, about 6' wide and 2' deep.)

Any ideas, or should I just get a fresh 40' tree from a nursery?

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Comments (9)

iforgotitsonevermind
14 years ago
Are you serious? A 40 foot tree?

There are some companies that move trees with mechanical tree spades mounted on trucks. It costs a lot of money. To pay thousands to move a pine and sweetgum then pay thousands in water only to have a high percentage it will not survive, then pay thousands to have it removed...
mbuckmaster
14 years ago
Yeah, probably not a good idea. The root system for almost any 40' tree will certainly be more than 6' x 2'...that was only the section that you saw ripped from the ground.

"Just getting" a fresh 40' tree is another issue. I would have a certified arborist come out for a look to make some recommendations. What s/he says may be surprisingly helpful.
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I don't know what lurker you're talking about. I haven't kept up with this thread. I continue to get posts in my email and don't know how to turn it off. Most of them were deleted without reading them. The tree was not ripped out of the ground. It was dug out however, the roots were entwined with the roots of 4 huge Pines so not all the roots could be dug out "gently". I told my son to do as little damage to the Pines as possible. He painstakingly dug that tree out as best he could. BTW, he has pulled shrubs out of the ground with his truck that were supposed to be thrown away. I can't kill anything so I took them, babied them and they are still alive today.
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turbo_tpl
14 years ago
You can almost forget about it. Below is a link to the relocation of the world record American Smoketree (34'). The root ball for the relocation was essentially a whole back yard:

http://www.agriculture.purdue.edu/fnr/html/ugrad/UrbFor/SmokeTree.html
Dan _Staley (5b Sunset 2B AHS 7)
14 years ago
Is this one of those hoax postings?

Dan
naturalstuff
14 years ago
Chop it down and tow it..not hard to move at all. :)
schmoo
14 years ago
There are operations that have dug this size and larger (see Shady Grove Nursery in SC). Machine dug up to 96" rootball, hand dug if larger.
But realistically....use a chain saw, much much cheaper....

Schmoo
lou_spicewood_tx
14 years ago
Plant a grove of 'Nanjing Beauty' bald/montezuma cypress. Water every day and fertilize monthly. You will have 40ft trees in 5 years. Maybe not but can easily get there in 10 years.

My brother planted 3 ft Nanjing Beauty at my mom's last fall/winter in Houston and it's already 6 ft. Plenty of growing season left. Could be 9 feet by fall! That's 6 ft of growth! Then again, I recall reading somewhere that Montezuma cypress grew 8 ft in a year...
pineresin
14 years ago
It can be done, if you have a few tens of thousands of $$ and some heavy lifting machinery to spare for the task. But success rates are still low. This one at the Longwood Gardens didn't make it.

Talking of gum trees, some Eucalyptus nitens planted in Britain grew 16m in 4 years. Unlikely they'll be hardy where the original poster is though.

Resin
swampwiz
Original Author
14 years ago
My trees are a lot dinkier than the one at the website. Certainly, I wouldn't want to hire a helicopter to lift it!

I just want to make sure that whatever I plant matches whatever is there already. It sounds like it will much more cost effective to just buy a young tree that matches the species I already have and let it grow. But I am not an expert in tree species, so I guess I can get someone from a tree nursery to come by and take a look?

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