Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.
LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry
LJN's Business Objectives Group (BOG) is for any Pro serious about building their business.
For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.
Replies
Thanks for the reply. The soil is not heavy in the "clay" sense. It's very sandy and compacted. I have no idea of the extent of the rootball. I guess that as I have quite a few, I ought to just bite the bullet and move one and see how it goes.
It may be some time before I know whether I've succeeded or not :-)
Cheers,
Roger
If the plants are quite large and bare at the base with just topgrowth, there's a really easy way of propagating them. Dig a hole large enough to hold almost all of the plant, lift the lavender out and drop it into the large hole, so that the top foliage is a little above ground level. Backfill over most of the plant with decent compost, to the level of where the foliage starts on the upper branches (it's a little bit like extreme layering, and it should look like you've got a load of randomly placed small lavender plants). If you leave the plants like that for a year or so, they will develop new rootgrowth on the buried stems so all you need to do is cut the new plants with some rootgrowth from the rest of the old plant. It's one of the easiest way to propagate lavenders and get good healthy plants from old tired stock.
I've never heard of that method of propagation Andrew. Very interesting. A bit like earthing up spuds by the sound of it.
However, I'm still left with the problem of digging them up. They are roughly a metre cube (I'll post a photo if it helps) and assuming the root ball is the same size as the top, that's a hell of a lot of digging. I was also hoping to move them and plant them straight away. From what you say, that's not going to be easy. What do you think would be the effect on their health if I trimmed them right back to make it easier to access the root ball ?
Thanks very much for that. It looks like my best bet would be to try the earthing up and take some cuttings as well. Must remember to take some before and after pics.
Thanks again to all who offered advice.
Roger (Geor----)