Moving Large Caliper Trees

Due to new tee locations on a few holes on Gray Hawk, we were forced to move some trees. Last week we fired up the 90" tree spade and, after the repair of a hydraulic leak, went through the process of moving them.

Moving trees with a trunk caliper greater than 8" is not a process I am entirely comfortable doing. Trees of this size need a much larger root system than the 90" spade is able to transplant. The removal of such a substantial chunk of the trees roots will often lead to death and always leads to a few years of stunted growth. That being said, we do own the spade and have a very capable, experienced operator, Joe Kirk, so we attempted it ourselves. In the end, if the trees don't pull through, we haven't lost too much.

I have included some pictures below of our spade and a video of the process. The video is not of our moving process but our process followed the exact same steps. If you are interested in planting trees in your own home landscape, this time of year is an excellent time.