Sometimes you’ve just got to rip out the old and rethink the way you’ve used space in the garden. This year we cut down a couple red twig dogwood that had gotten overgrown in their space next to the house.

I also transplanted a few plants that weren’t thriving there, hoping that better conditions and less competition would make it possible for these plants to flourish.

And we moved a small Japanese maple tree that I purchased at Master Gardener College a few years ago — as it was growing out of the space where we’d situated it.

I’d wanted to get rid of the old dogwood shrubs — the only two that survived from a planting of bare root twigs some years ago — for quite a while. But I never could face pulling out a healthy plant even though it was growing in a place I no longer wanted it.

Reading this winter inspired me to go ahead and do it. Scott and I worked on the bed, cutting down everything and readying the base plants to be dug out. Because he had work in the vineyard and I couldn’t do all the digging that was needed by myself, I asked our friend Ryan to assist with the project.

When Ryan arrived I introduced him to my newest tool (I love equipment) the Root Slayer. Ryan did a lot of landscaping in high school and he was as impressed as Scott and I have been with the Root Slayer shovel. It really allowed him to make short work of the digging out of the dogwood roots and then digging the Japanese Maple for transplant.

If you’ve got a major digging job I highly recommend the Root Slayer. We’ve used it both in the garden and in the woods when we planted Michigan Holly a few weeks ago. It does an amazing job when you’re hand digging and I highly recommend it.

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