garden transplantation experiments


i inherited a lot of plants from the previous owners of my house
and now i want to move them around. there's a lot of
conflicting advice on the internet about when it's safe to transplant
various plants and when it isn't so i'm just trying stuff
and logging the results here.

universal tips

WATER WATER WATER

plants love water, especially after a major disruption like
transplanting. every plant is different but giving them a good drink
once per day for the first few weeks after transplanting them
is usually a good idea.

it will grow back

a little bit of drooping or leaf loss over the first couple weeks
after transplanting a plant is normal. transplantation is very
stressful for plants and this is a common way for
plants to respond to stress.


hostas


hostas simply do not care. as long as the destination is suitable
you can happily transplant them whenever you like with little risk
of damaging the plants. i've aggressively divided and rearranged the
hostas in my garden several times and have yet to have a bad result;
by the next season they've completely bounced back and you can
usually see them start growing within a few weeks of moving them.

hostas really like shade but most varieties will tolerate sun too
so as long as you give them enough water it's hard to find a spot
they won't do well in.


peonies


i love all the peonies in my yard but they're placed
very haphazardly. there's conflicting advice on the internet
about when it's safe to transplant them so i'm going to
try a few things and report on the results.

one consistent recommendation that i intend to follow is
to wait until the plants have finished blooming before transplanting.
i didn't have the time or energy
to transplant my peonies in the spring
so i have no problem following this rule.

another more contentious suggestion i've seen is
that you should wait until later in the year to transplant so the
plants have a chance to store energy during the summer.

this is the claim i want to test.

this year all my peonies were done blooming in june so
i'm moving one at the end of june, right at the start of summer
then i'll move one in august, in the middle of summer
and i'll move the last one in september, just before fall

june 28, 2025

i moved the first peony from its previous home next to a fence.
it turned out to be two plants so i kept them together and 
planted them both in a new bed in front of my garage.

august 6, 2025

moved another peony from a different spot along the fence to the new bed in
front of the garage. it looks like the one i moved about a month ago is doing
OK; one half of it is thiriving but the other is very wilted even though i
watered it A LOT.

september 9, 2025

the last peony to move was a much bigger one near the one i moved in august.
the one i moved in august is still doing very well so i assume this other one
will too unless moving them later in the season is somehow worse for them.

october 12, 2025

no significant differences between the plants i moved in june, august, and september as
the leaves start to fall and temperatures drop. i'll post another update in
the spring when things start flowering but for now at least it seems like
peonies don't much care when you transplant them.


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written by peter beard on 2025-06-28, last updated 2025-10-12
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