Well, I've finally taken the plunge by repotting and root pruning my Pachira Aquatica and Dracena Marginata trees. They were gifted to me and have been slowly declining over the past two years in old potting soil. This was my first time root pruning container trees, so it was quite the experience. It's a bit of a story, but I've included many photos along the way. =)

Here is how the two trees looked before I started:

While debating to prune these trees or not, I fertilized them for the first time and the P. Aquatica started to grow a new shoot! Lesson learned: Address plant needs before doing anything "semi-permanent". Very glad I didn't prune my trees!

Removing the pots was a two-person job. I had to use a saw and a sharp knife to cut the roots that filled the drain holes and were circling the water collection tray.

P. Aquatica shown on the left, with a lot of roots and dirt already removed. D. Marginata on the right, taken after pot was cut away. A small table was used to balance the trees. Was very glad I bought a miniature hand cultivator (three prong). Used that and the hose to remove all the old soil.

Nearly finished for the P. Aquatica on the left and D. Marginata on the right. Big mistake! The new pots I bought had a different taper and were slightly smaller than the old pots.

I did not expect so many large roots extending outwards, so it was very intimidating to cut those. Driving to get a new pot would have been 30-60mins and I didn't have an easy way to keep the roots wet. Hopefully that was not a poor choice!

It took a quite a while to sort out the dead and circling roots for my D. Marginata. So many roots were circling so badly that removing them ended up in me losing a large portion of the root ball.

Since I was new at the job, it was challenging to determine where to make the cuts. Many people have said they regretted not root pruning enough. I'm not sure if I will regret the amount that I did? This has been the scariest/most worrisome part.

Here is a shot of the roots I had removed from both trees. D. Marginata shown on the right - I added in more gritty mix after moving the tree indoors.

The roots around the pot edges looked quite healthy and many of them were quite large, requiring me to use my loppers. The interior roots were mostly dead/in poor condition.

I attempted to secure both trees in their respective pots. In retrospect, I would have used cloth to protect the trunks, but I was careful to not damage the bark.

Since they are indoor trees, this felt a bit silly, but helped a little in moving them inside. I read that securing the trees is a good idea, but found few examples on how to do so with non-bonsai-sized trees. I plan to remove the rope after another week.

I closed all the curtains/blinds for the day after I repotted. The next day was 50% open. After that was a string of mostly stormy days, so light levels were nice and low. Temperature has been purposely kept comfortably cool to reduce evaporation.

It's now been about a week and the trees are still alive! See photo below.

The leaves of both my P. Aquatica and D. Marginata have wilted a bit. I expected both trees to do extremely poorly, but the changes don't appear that severe yet?

In fact, the P. Aquatica new growth is growing more and I have spotted additional new growth on the top and lower portions of the tree. I take this as a good sign.

The D. Marginata looks about the same. But at least not terribly worse. The highest leaves are the most impacted.

Watering them has been an interesting experience as well. How do you guys drain the excess water in the dish below?

I purchased a battery-powered fluid transfer pump (as some recommended in the forums), but the little impeller at the end can't such up all the excess water. I've had to use a turkey baster to suck up as much as the remainder as possible.

There always a tiny bit left, which hopefully won't be an issue in the future. After the roots are more established, I plan to prop the pots up on a slight angle to make draining easier.

Is there a better way of doing this? It takes a fair bit of time and effort!!

What next? Will these two trees survive?

I'm not sure yet! I had become a lot more attached to these two trees and their interesting shapes over the past two years than expected.

Hopefully at least my little story here will help give some an idea of what's involved. Perhaps others will even give some helpful advice for the next time I take on a similar adventure.

Cheers! =)