I moved a Garnet about 3 years ago (from one ground location to another) I done a bit of research and everyone recommended that I waited till the tree was dormant, so I waited till February and moved the tree then........since then its had no problems in its new home :)

I plan to move mine again in February 2016 into a container, as we are moving in the next couple of years and I want to take the tree to our new home.

I would move them as soon as the leaves start to fall. Japanese maples are a lot tougher than most people realize. I think the delicate looking leaves throws them off.

Mike.....with a PacNW strolling garden.

LOL!! Mike, maybe you need to take a field trip to VA to give leslietuck a hand!?!

And I would agree with the timing....move as soon as the leaves begin to fall. Early to mid fall is actually an excellent time of year to attempt this sort of transplant. Temperatures tend to be cool, rainfall more plentiful (usually), soils still warm and roots are in a very active growth period. So with the tree no longer needing to focus on producing and maintaining foliar growth, it can center its attention on establishing a good root system.

Thank you Mike. What a lovely shot -- I can almost feel that path underfoot, smell the conifers. Maybe I can find someone who would consult with me remotely. My light conditions/contours invite three or four different planting /water feature vignettes but from my elevated rear deck the whole is visible so it has to hang together, colors balance..... (Anything tall enough to play "hide and reveal" from that vantage would shade too much valuable planting area). I contracted this bug at the Butchart Japanese garden.

Try to make all your design decisions from one spot, in your case, the elevated deck. Call it 'The Captain's Chair' and take charge.

Here's a few design basics that I adhere to.

I'm going to start with the lawn. (Oh no! ;-) ) Think of it as water. The shape should reflect that. If a stream, make it gently meandering and just wide enough for two people to stroll side by side. If wider, think pond. The two are usually combined. Where the view is good the 'pond' can come closer to the property line. That doesn't give you much room to plant something in front of your good view. If the view is not so good, keep your 'pond' away from the property line so you have room to plant some privacy plants and give your design depth. The pond doesn't have to be large and it can be skipped altogether, just leaving a stream instead if you are a serious gardener and need as much room as possible for plants.

Most people start with a lawn that goes from border to border and then cut out narrow flower beds around the foundation and the perimeter of the property. They end up with flower beds that look like cutouts and the design has no 'flow' like it would have if the lawn was thought of as water. Flow gives the design cohesiveness, otherwise it's a collection of pieces that don't seem to fit..... with a lawn that is much too large.

I was a Landscape Designer and contractor for over 35 years here in the Seattle area and did a lot of yard makeovers. I loved it! Even more than new installations. Almost all of it was for people who were not gardeners and wanted low maintenance. Most thought that the more plants you had, the more work you had. Not so, if you know what plants to use and how to place them where they won't be a problem. My garden, spread out over 10 acres, is low maintenance out of necessity. I'm about the only one doing any work here and I'm 71....for a few more months. ;-)

Do you have a picture or two of your garden taken from the elevated deck?

Maybe we can go from there.

Mike

Mike, thank you!

I do indeed have a picture or 5 or 6 from my back deck. But you must promise not to laugh. I have gardened for a long time -- but in the back of a big brick colonial in full sun. After 10 years I had a really lovely Southern garden built around a pretty carefully curated collection of ~150 roses, from Old Blush on up through the ages. The old teas and noisettes were my favorites. THAT was maintenance, LOL. But just as you note, that was also about (ever expanding) beds,... Life changes and now I am single again, caring for a very sick mother who lives with me, communing to work in Philadelphia, trying to rehab a house and learning to garden in a new way. I mention all this to beg a little bit of a pass on my unimpressive results to date -- its hard to find time to study and learn! That said, what time I do have is devoted not to trips to the tile store, but to this -- there's an image "just below the surface" -- its compulsion. And given how precious that time is, it feels awful to be floundering! I am so grateful for your note.

The site is not easy to photograph because when the sun is out, the camera really exaggerates the shadows; therefor I'm uploading shots taken on overcast days. The setting is a suburban woodland of ginormous red, white and chestnut oaks and tulip poplars that slowly are giving way to runs of American beech. It is hillside watershed into a Potomac river tributary. Soil is two or three decades of leaf litter sitting on top of marine clay, and that clay is important to keep stable. The backyard is on the south side of the house -- the sun travels right over my roof line, is blotted by 2:00 p.m. by a big old white oak on my west wall. It is a pie shaped lot, the narrow end deep in the woods.

The first picture is from last fall, looking at the back of the house from about half-way to the back property line. That's metasequoia "Miss Grace" planted high on some big rocks (that can be repurposed eventually). On the far left, a very old, not terribly lovely Fosters holly (I think) -- the end of a screen of now 18 footers that I've been trying to rehab with pruning but...

The second photo is from early this spring-- my little Lilliputian garden secreted among those great big trunks. [All the cryptomeria here took a bad hit with the freeze/thaw cycle this spring]. I was okay with the idea of a "grotto" as the best I would be able to do in the shadows. But when the big oak off my deck that so intimately connected the house to the woods finally gave up and came down, everything changed.
In the photo below, the rocks along the property line on the right (which extends another 20 feet beyond the rocks) I put there with the idea of filling in the grade a bit, but want someone trained in water/erosion control to keep me from making a mistake I might regret. I imagined, and still do, a small pondless falls next to the big stump on the far right -- not for splash, just for some sense of movement. Now that I am thinking bolder, I also imagine that the "source" for that falls is a very shallow "destination" pond roughly behind the azaleas (in the photo below it would be mostly screened by the top of the variegated dogwood). The dogwood is Samaritan -- just one of many poor choices/placements I've made -- it will get too big to between the sun and everything that is behind it.
The river stones I was just playing with. Those will go away. You can just make out the deck coffee table in the photo below, where I imagine a bench would be. The Nootka (oddly my favorite thing in the whole yard-- I love weeping forms and this one just makes me smile) also is poorly placed, probably should be snug up against the big stump to backdrop the vignette of a the falls, with a red dissectum in there somewhere (I have 1 gallon Shaina, Temukayama, Red Dragon, and Orangeola waiting for homes), and a bigger boulder than I have. I also went with Alice hydrangeas on the left for scale, but honestly I do not like them, at least not now -- they are coarse -- another variety would be lovelier. Or something else fronting that stand of oaks. The Atlas Cedar was another inexpensive chance taken -- I'm fond of him but tall as he is, he'll get no respect inn that spot. Apricot carpet roses in front of the hydrangea were meant to help call him out. Not shown here are a recently purchased an "at your own risk" 6 foot Seiryu that needs a home and an Omurayama that I imagine on the property line next to the "pondless" pond, this side the stump. And Red Sentinel, back there just to the left of the wood pile, is not his best self in that shade, neither red nor sentinel-like. Seems like his columnar shape should be next to a trunk. LOL,

Where do I start from here? Lay in the hardscaping, re-position the existing trees...purchase many more... but this time with something like a plan. I sure could use a steady hand to guide me..

Oh Mike, is it that hopeless? I am an eager student...

Leslie