The Lemon Fool

Trying to remove a large holly bush, I removed all the major branches and then poked around the roots experimentally with a fork. There seemed to be a lot less root than I expected near the surface. I gave the trunk a bit of a shove to see how solid it was and I was very surprised when it fell over.

Inspecting where the root ball should have been, it was encased in black plastic. It seems that whoever planted it hadn't bothered removing it from the pot it was bought in. There where a few side roots that had managed to break free. The tap root had forced it's way through the base, but was much thinner than it should be and just snapped when I shoved the trunk.

It certainly made removing the holly remarkably easy, but you have to wonder who plants a shrub in a pot? Maybe they were trying to constrain it's growth? Could it have been intended as a temporary measure that was then forgotten?

On several occasions I have moved a small potted Christmas tree from the house to the garden and sunk the pot in the soil. It makes picking it up for inside the following year easy and stops it blowing over. I fool myself that it might help with summer drying out and stop it romping away too. I have had a couple of Christmases out of several trees that way before they became too big or didn't pass the aesthetic test.

I have moved house at least twice and probably left 2 planted that way.

kempiejon wrote:On several occasions I have moved a small potted Christmas tree from the house to the garden and sunk the pot in the soil.

I can see the logic for a Christmas tree, but not for a holly bush.

Holly roots are tough customers, as tough as oaks apparently. For that reason, it's considered a bad idea to plant them close to house walls because they can disturb the foundations. Could it be that somebody was (ahem) hedging his bets?

Bungee Towers had a 25 foot holly right up against the front door when we bought the old wreck, and our surveyor really wasn't happy about that. But we figured that, if it hadn't moved several hundred tonnes of stonework yet, then it probably wasn't ever going to do it now, so we chopped it down and root-killed it, and phew, we got away with it.

I blame Monty Don, personally. He always used to go on about how you shouldn't tease out the rootball of a tree before you planted it - instead, he said, you should just stick it in the ground and let it go its own way. (I think he may have changed his views now, after several of his Gardeners World trees at Longacre blew over.) But I don't think even he would have been so daft as to leave it in the wrapper. It takes all sorts.

BJ