DIY Transplant Lilac Bushes

The Main House Fixer Upper came with some very lovely, mature lilac bushes at the entry sidewalk. But, the bushes really crowd the walkway and have become unruly. These lilac bushes would look so much better along the white fence. This post will show you my DIY transplant lilac bushes and give you a one-year update so see how my transplanting efforts turned out.

Below is a photo of one of the lilac bushes I want to move. I’ll be digging them up in April as supposedly Spring is the best time to transplant lilac bushes. You can see it just started to sprout leaves.

Digging Mature Lilac Bushes:

I don’t have fancy equipment but that’s not going to stop me! Just me and shovels. I soon discovered that the lilac bushes have a very dense network of roots. So I opted to use a serrated shovel called a Root Slayer to help break up the roots.

The Root Slayer helped me to parcel sections of the large lilac bush that I could spread out when planting to create a nice line of smaller bushes along the fence. Below is a photo of the bush sections. I’ll admit, at this point I am a bit worried that I’m simply massacring the lilac bush. Will these actually live after transplanting? Stay tuned.

Once I had all the lilac shoots dug up, I found the master root ball! You can see the start of a large tap root that went deep into the earth. Unfortunately, I was not able to keep this root ball attached to any lilacs. I’m hoping the lilacs will still be ok. But I do admit that my methods have been quite brutish.

Below is a photo of the cut end of the deep tap root. I had to cut the roof with a reciprocating saw and a wood pruning blade.

That’s as deep as I was able to dig out, so the majority of the tap root is still there. Hopefully I won’t have to battle a new lilac bush that comes up from this. Guess I’ll deal with that if/when it happens!

Below is the cleared area where one lilac bush used to be. Ah it’s nice to have the clear space! Much better.

Moving Dug-Up Lilac Bushes:

Next, I loaded my sections of lilac bushes into the garden cart to take them to their new location.

Some of the root balls were still pretty big. They balanced precariously in the cart, but we made it in the end. Even with a flat cart tire!

New Location for the Lilac Bushes:

Here I am digging a new hole with the lilacs. You can see some of the already transplanted lilac bushes here as well. Hopefully they love it here. It would be great to have thick, happy lilac bushes line the fence and all flower in the Spring!

Finally, I gave all the new transplants a good watering. I kept watering regularly all summer too. I’d never watered the mature lilac bush, but it had that huge taproot. These sections only have small root balls so they need as much help as they can get.

Below is the row of transplanted lilacs along the fence. Here’s hoping they thrive!

One Year Later Transplanted Lilacs:

Below is a photo of the transplanted lilac bushes one year later. Some of them made it, and we even have some flowers! However, you may be able to tell some of the tall shoots did not make it. It was a tough year. But even through the tall shoots died, their roots still lived, and I have small bush sections still growing there. I’ll keep watering this summer too.

Here are the transplant lilac bushes with lilac flowers one year later!

New Flowers for the Main House:

So what did we do with at the Main House? Well, I opted for smaller bushes of lavender and my favorite flower, peonies. Below are the new potted plants as I figure out how to place them.

Here are the new flowers in the ground. I gathered some good-looking rocks to help decorate.

A local toad showed up during the planting so my husband and I made a toad house around him with the bottom of a clay pot. Haha.

Here is a close-up of our visiting toad. He left a day or two later, so I moved the toad house in with the new flowers. Hopefully he’ll stop by again.