Hello friends welcome to Gardening with Creekside I am Jenny and today is the day we have talked
about for a little while now we are going to move Frannie's hydrangea I call it Frannie's hydrangea
because my college roommate Francesca whom we called Frannie gave this hydrangea to us as a
housewarming present 18 years ago and I planted the hydrangea in this spot she has been there
now for 18 years but it is time for her to move on to a different location we have talked about
Frannie's hydrangeas for multiple times now people think that maybe it's called a Fuji Waterfall
hydrangea still not quite exactly sure on that so let me just show you why we are moving Frannie
today so you can see we have all of our equipment out here um but frannie's hydrangea is she's
quite large she is currently probably at least five feet wide four to five feet tall perhaps
she's big but which is fine but she doesn't bloom reliably here like last year i got five blooms off
of her total so we are going to move her over to the creek in relation there is the kitchen window
the one thing i am concerned about is the gorgeous linton rose there that brenna was just showing us
obviously i do not want to disturb her if i have to move her temporarily then we will that's fine
but i think jerry's going to be able to use the bobcat it has the smaller bucket on it so i think
we're going to be able there to go in and just dig her up and we're going to move her over to
the nursery by the pond so i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to trim her all the way down to the
ground i have done several things with like as far as pruning wise with frannie before sometimes
in early spring i would prune her all the way down to the ground she grows back up and would re-bloom
sometimes i waited till after she blooms then cut her i just don't know what kind of hydrangea she
is so i can't figure out if she blooms on new growth old growth or both so for the sake of
us moving her i am going to go ahead and cut it all the way down to the ground so if you're going
to be transplanting a hydrangea especially one that is as big as franny you really might want
to consider just go ahead and cut it all the way back down to the ground even if i have to
sacrifice some flowers this season in the long run it's going to be worth it because the reason we
trim it down one damage and transportation right so less likely to get hurt when we're moving her
and then also for the plant itself when it's trying to recover if you've got all of this
growth here that the root system has to maintain and stay healthy it's just a lot of stress on
the plant so we're going to eliminate a lot of that growth so that they can put most of its
energy into the root system and then what little top growth there is so that way over long term
we have a very happy strong plant so first things first we're going to cut her to the ground
you can see how big the base is of this hydrangea
i mean it just the base itself is easily i would say three feet um in width and
from this end maybe two feet wide so what we're going to do is jerry's going to try with the
bobcat to go ahead and dig it up trying to get as many of the root system as we can
all right mighty mr man strikes again no hydrangea is too big for him he got it all right so franny's
hydrangea is in the bucket look at that thing it fills up that bucket every single ounce of it
and then look at the root on that thing man so what we're gonna go do now is we're gonna drive
her over to the other side of the pond jerry and i have already decided where she's gonna go
so we'll take her over there we're gonna use the bobcat and the auger we'll probably have
to og a couple of holes to get her in there and then we'll get her nice and snug in there and
she'll be in her new home i will also mention that this is a great time of year to do this
because one i can cut her all the way back and i know that she's going to flush out
a new growth relatively soon our temperatures are still nice and pretty cool so that she's not going
to be under a lot of heat stress we are going the reason that we chose this specific day to go ahead
and do this is because we're going to get three days of rain so we're going to get her in the
ground and then the good lord is going to take care of her and give her a good rain for three
days get really well settled in so if you can time it where you have like cool cloudy days like today
is cloudy and then we're going to have three days of rain the heat has not hit it just makes the
transition a little bit better especially when you're moving a behemoth like franny
all right so mr man decided it would just be easier to use the bucket on the bobcat instead
of the auger because it is such a shallow wide and shallow root system on this so he went ahead
and just dug a nice hole for it he was getting ready to push frannie in the hole and i said
wait wait wait we got to buy a tone and do some other things so we're going to get some biotone
in the hole and then he is just going to manhandle the hydrangea with the bobcat and we'll just kind
of push her into place and get her arranged correctly and then we'll move the soil around
it makes all the difference in the world having the of course the bobcat
if i fully understand that most people do not have this kind of machinery at home i will say when he
was moving it that the hydrangea was acting like he could split into multiple different clumps so
this was would be the perfect time if you wanted to divide this hosta hosta hydrangea now would be
the perfect time to divide the hydrangea because it was naturally just so big and different areas
were coming off of the main clump so if you have a big huge hydrangea you want to split it moving
transplanting and splitting at the same time is a good option so emily went and grabbed the biotone
for me so we're going to shake it in the hole a lot of it and then push frannie into the hole
all right my friends so the project of moving that franny's hydrangea is complete i'm just gonna
go ahead and tell you i don't know what you can hear but the bull frogs have started croaking and
the power company is on our street trimming trees for the power lines so if you hear all this
noise just forgive us do it the best we can here people okay so just to kind of set you up where
we are standing obviously we have the pond right beside of us this is a spring fed pond
and if you can see the big holly tree that is at the head of the pond underneath that holly tree
is a natural spring and years ago well before jackson was born jerry had this area dug out
and had the pond made and then we have an overflow pipe that goes underground so that the pond can
then empty into the creek i mean it and it flows fast so we have a way for the water to escape
by doing the pond we allowed for this whole area to be dried out so that we could have the
nursery here so that is the purpose of the pond we have a lot of wildlife in here we don't add
anything here but there's tons of bullfrogs and snapping turtles and so forth and so on
this strip here is between the pond and the hillside that is part of our property
and it goes pretty much straight up my long-term vision is to develop woodland gardens in here so
this is kind of that first step in the direction this little strip is grass so in the summertime
we mow it last year i found the love of mowing because it's nobody can get to me and i can
just be on the mower but this little strip kind of gave me the little willies because
we have a zero turn mower and you have to be careful so you don't end up in the pond so i said
let's turn this little strip into a garden the first step being that franny's hydrangea would
go in here eventually this will be mulch we will be able to put woodland um shade loving
plants up into the woods all sorts of fun things along the pond so this is just an
area i have some perennials that i want to go ahead and put in here that i have
had in other gardens that i want to bring so this is just an area that i'm going to have a lot of
fun developing in the in the coming years the sun does come up here this will so it will come
up and then it will get great morning sun midday sun and then it sets behind us so all of this will
get a break from that hot afternoon sun which i think is what franny needs it'll be perfect
so this is just a really kind of a fun little area that i'm reclaiming the grass from to turn it into
just a fun woodland shade loving morning sun area put some native things in here um kind of just
whatever floats my boat i will put in here but franny's hydrangea is in here again i am not gonna
worry about watering her now because we're gonna get three days of rain starting tonight what's the
point um but this summer as the heat hits and the rains stop i will have to make sure that i keep
her watered because really for the first year you want to watch those shrubs and trees especially
when you are transplanting because we obviously lost some of her roots when we duck her out of the
ground so you just want to make sure that you can maintain her water during those hot summer months
so that she can get nice and acclimated and then after that she should be pretty much hands off
but anyway frannie's hydrangea is out the next step is that i will put my white by the gate
camellia in her place but we're going to leave that for another day and as always thanks so much
for gardening with creekside y'all have a fabulous day and we'll see in the next video bye friends