Moving a small magnolia

confusticated

Hi, I got a small magnolia as a gift when we moved into our house two years ago. I dug out a small corner of the lawn at the time and planted it there with some bulbs and it's been doing well there. Problem is the lawn slopes unevenly and steeply, so we're currently relaying it. The flowerbed is at a lower level than the rest, so I would like to be able to raise that a bit too, but I don't want to kill the magnolia! I'm wondering whether to dig it out, fill in the ground a bit and replant it in the same hole but less deeply, or just build up the soil around it and let it grow up out of it in time? I don't actually want to move its location. Extremely amateur gardener here, any and all advice welcome!

macraignil

To dig it up would not be very good for the health of the plant but if you do it in the winter when there are no leaves on it then it should recover OK. Building up soil around the trunk is said to be bad for trees as the above ground part of the bark is said to get damaged by not being able to breath as it would have done before being buried. If you want to build up the flower bed maybe you could do that but leave the area immediately in contact with the tree trunk at the level it currently is.

looksee

If you must do something about it now I would chance digging it up with as much soil as you can get. Soak it well before you dig - a couple of gallons of water poured on slowly to give it chance to soak in. I would suggest you do not replant it before the levelling is done, put it into a (very) large pot, wrap it in some sort of fabric sacking and keep it damp or ease it into a tough plastic sack - don't dig it till you are ready to go ahead with the levelling, presumably immediately? When you go to replant it pour a good bit of water into the hole before you put the plant in.

Its not ideal, as macraignil has said, but if the choice is between that and burying it, then it is the safer route.

standardg60

I have yet to see a Magnolia transplant successfully, they don't like to be moved at all.
They also like to planted shallowly, ie roots near the surface, so building up the soil is not an option either.
Your best bet if you want to keep it is to put in a retaining wall about 80cm away and build the soil up to that instead.

confusticated

Just an update on this - I built up the lawn in the areas around it but left the magnolia until winter, dug it out entirely and moved it to a different part of the garden. Still need to fix the lawn properly where it was, but it's flowering away this week in its new location! Thanks for the advice, it takes so long with gardening to see if trying something will pay off!