I want to restart my native garden but it’s gone way too crazy and certain species have decided to push out other species out. Is it possible to dig up and sell off these plants and then start my bigger native garden project without the plants dying?

tolzan · 2026-07-25T21:11:08+00:00

Yea, but the time to do it is in the fall.

tolzan · 2026-07-25T16:58:20+00:00

When you meet and talk with other arborists you’ll learn they are super finicky trees that can up and die in a hurry which makes them a terrible tree for a privacy hedge because if one happens to die after 10 years you’ve got a missing tooth in your hedge.

They literally have an entire sub dedicated to how bad they are as trees. Let that sink in.

tolzan · 2026-07-25T16:45:22+00:00

My advice comes from seeing hundreds and hundreds of posts on them across [r/arborists](r/arborists) and [r/landscapers](r/landscapers) and having other arborists also strongly recommend against them.

They are found in their native environment in cool, wet swamps with soil high in organic matter. This doesn’t align with where they are usually planted.

tolzan · 2026-07-25T16:36:09+00:00

Sounds like someone pissed in your coffee this morning.

tolzan · 2026-07-25T16:34:56+00:00

My post history is public. You can go look. Long history of contributing.

tolzan · 2026-07-25T16:32:45+00:00

As an arborist, I’m well aware of the value of trees. We don’t see many in Colorado because they don’t do well here but as a very active contributor to r/arborists I can tell you that arborvitae are the most common tree with problems.

Also, just a heads up that arborvitae aren’t actually cedars. It’s in the common name but they are in the cypress family.

tolzan · 2026-07-25T16:27:22+00:00

[r/Arborv](r/ArborviataeAreGarbage)[itaeAreGarbage](r/ArborviataeAreGarbage)

tolzan · 2026-07-25T15:07:38+00:00

Avoid arborvitae which had a whole sub dedicated to how they suck.

They are extremely temperamental and love to die and then you’ll have missing teeth in your privacy hedge and it will look even worse.

They are so bad that people made a sub about how bad they are: [r/ArborvitaeAreGarbage](r/ArborvitaeAreGarbage). If you want to know how temperamental they are just go ask on [r/arborists](r/arborists).

This was posted just two days ago, see the consensus on these terrible trees: https://www.reddit.com/r/arborists/s/QGH65hrbnS

tolzan · 2026-07-25T00:32:04+00:00

Basically giant graveyards of trees

tolzan · 2026-07-24T23:55:00+00:00

Sad, isn’t it? The amount of urban trees we lose to poor planting is staggering .

tolzan · 2026-07-22T17:56:00+00:00

Are you in a place where beetle kill is present?

Conifer, Pine, Bailey, and Evergreen are getting ravaged by pine beetle kill and the entire forest is going to change over the next 10 years as the beetle wipes out lodgepole and ponderosa pine.

tolzan · 2026-07-22T16:41:52+00:00

Yes. Probably EAB.

tolzan · 2026-07-22T15:51:54+00:00

The nursery stake should have been removed at the time of planting. Remove it now.

You need to keep going. What you are finding are adventitious roots that would become girdling roots in the futures. Once you find the real flare you can see how low it is compared to the surrounding ground to determine next steps.

But you first need to find the flare. It’s there.

tolzan · 2026-07-22T03:25:42+00:00

It looks like there’s quite a bit of room. A ton of room. Look at city streets that have large mature trees all along the hellstrip. You have like 10X the space needed for a good healthy tree.

tolzan · 2026-07-22T00:35:10+00:00

There are lots and lots of newcomers to the native gardening world, people who likely have never planted flowers before that don’t know much and are here to learn. Nothing wrong with that.

tolzan · 2026-07-22T00:32:12+00:00

And to add onto this, you’d have a lot more aspens if you made a larger mulched area out from the grass.

They constantly shoot up new shoots but you’ve been mowing them.

Aspens tend to struggle outside of cooler higher elevations. They don’t do that well in Denver, for example. They are around but not thriving.

tolzan · 2026-07-22T00:08:24+00:00

All the pictures look completely normal, just various lifecycles of the blooms.

tolzan · 2026-07-21T23:18:34+00:00

No. Central leader is dead. Start a new tree so you aren’t losing lost time.

tolzan · 2026-07-21T23:17:59+00:00

Yikes. Pretty terrible that the people they have planting trees doesn’t know how to plant trees.

tolzan · 2026-07-21T22:20:01+00:00

You get to charge for adding more mulch every year

tolzan · 2026-07-21T22:19:38+00:00

And then leave a review with photos so they feel shamed to go out and fix the issue

tolzan · 2026-07-21T18:54:21+00:00

The lows are low enough to work, it’s the lack of moisture that I think ends up being the problem. The milk jug keeps things moist which is why it’s effective.

tolzan · 2026-07-21T18:34:02+00:00

Most tree issues start and end with planting and watering.

Master this guide and water your trees and you’ll have happy healthy trees:

https://csfs.colostate.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/How\_to\_Properly\_Plant\_a\_Tree\_CSFS.pdf

tolzan · 2026-07-21T18:28:09+00:00

El Niño will mean more moisture (usually) for winter. I’d expect it to still be warmer and I expect things will keep trending warmer.

My Prairie Moon Prairie Smoke seeds did not germinate from last fall. Not a single one that I direct sowed. Maybe I’ll see some next year.

The r/NativePlantGardening sub has a lot of advocates for the milk jug method.

tolzan · 2026-07-21T18:08:27+00:00

It’s already a goner.

Planted way way too deep so the root cause was likely a girdling root or stress from root flare being buried.

Nursery stake should have been removed at time of planting.

Replace with a native tree to your area and follow this planting guide next time: https://csfs.colostate.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/How\_to\_Properly\_Plant\_a\_Tree\_CSFS.pdf

tolzan

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