The unidentifiable shrub

One of the yard-improvement journeys we embarked on a few weeks ago involved moving some shrubs. The person who planted the five shrubs (required in our subdivision) in our front "flowerbed" was, um, less experienced than Savannah at planting anything that is supposed to grow.
The space they occupied was about 5 feet deep and 12 feet across. The shrubs that were planted there included a potentilla bush (which grow 4 feet tall and wide), a euonymus bush (10 feet tall and 8 feet wide), a really pretty unidentifiable bush (currently more than 6 feet tall and about 4 feet wide), a tam juniper (about the least attractive plant on the planet--3 feet high and 10 feet wide), and a blue fescue (about one foot tall and wide). I am sure any of you who have done any planting--or maybe I should say "growing" since you can plant in any way you choose (as evidenced here)--already see my point. The tam OR euonymus alone could have filled the entire space, which happens to be in front of my living room window. So what happens to plants when you put five of them in a space that one of them should occupy?!? They grow over the sidewalk, crowd one another out, fight for what little nutrients are in the clay, and many die. We did not want our plants to die (especially since the tam would likely win out against all the others).

We kept this situation under control last year, but it was time for these plants to have new homes, so we began to dig. The first shrub to be moved was the "unidentifiable bush" that is my favorite of them all. It has beautiful blossoms in the spring and is just a good-looking shrub the rest of the year. I have been driving myself mad trying to discover what this shrub is. I have searched and searched for anything that even resembles it in the many gardening books I have stolen from my Mom. They failed me! Nothing was even close.


We began our digging and discovered that this shrub has had a tag on it this whole time. WHAT?!? The tag was hidden beneath the bark mulch and I was ecstatic when we found it. I pocketed it, resisting the urge to run inside and look it up immediately. I was bubbling with joy since I could now identify this pretty bush and read up on it's future potential. It is a Nanking Cherry. No wonder I couldn't find it among the shrubs. It is a fruit! Mystery solved!

As we continued digging, we discovered that we were chopping a LOT of roots even though we were giving the plant a pretty wide berth. I kept cringing every time my shovel went through another little lifeline of this poor plant. As we dug we found that almost all of the root system was pointing one direction--the completely opposite direction of the tam (suprise, suprise). After three hours of work we finally had the cherry in its new home. I was nervous that we had killed it because we had chopped so many roots. I decided to have a good attitude about it and was determined that we either saved its life or had mercy on the poor plant by killing it quickly since the tam was going to kill it anyway.

Three days after this transplant we left for a six-day trip. Upon our return I was sure that this cherry bush would be a bunch of dead sticks. Although the buds still looked good, I was not yet satisfied. Yesterday I finally decided to admit that the plant lived! The bush's blossoms have opened and it is happily welcoming another spring from its new home. I am so excited!


This whole situation got me thinking (scary, I know). I have always believed in the saying, "bloom where you are planted." This shrub had been thriving where it was planted, which I now find quite impressive considering the poor state of its root system (you will notice it is only about three feet tall in the first picture and it is now taller than the fence). I am sure it will be much healthier and happier where it is now (maybe it will even produce fruit), but it was doing the best it could with what it had been given. I thought about how sometimes we go along doing pretty good and not even realizing that we are slowly being choked out by something in our lives that is negatively influencing us. Let's not only bloom where we are planted, but also be the strongest plant so that we can thrive no matter where we are planted. If we have to move that negative influence away from us, let's do it. It may not be a pleasant experience and we may hack off something that we thought was vital to our survival. By so doing we will not just survive, but we will thrive without that negative influence slowly choking us out.