The plant is already stressed out as you described.Rather than changing all soil and repotting it again try to change a location and check if too wet.The best soil is sometimes not an answer.Sorry I don't know what's wrong with it, but I would take small steps.It does take time for a new plant to get established and its best not to put it in full sun.Glazed pot may be keeping moisture in, but if you don't water too much it should work out.Did you put stones on the bottom of the pot for drainage? In any case I would rather not disturb it again just try to take small steps suggested and it may just get better.Don't give up as yet..

I hope you didn't put stones in the bottom for drainage. Contrary to popular opinion, it doesn't work.

Growing plants in a container is a very different situation from growing things in the ground. You have a very restricted environment in that the soil medium is entirely enclosed so water is not able to disperse as rapidly or as naturally as it does in inground plantings. For that reason you need a very fast draining potting soil. Not garden soil or topsoil, not compost. In the case of garden soil or "topsoil", it is too heavy and doesn't allow sufficient drainage. In the case of compost, it breaks down too rapidly and in that decomposition process, the particles become too uniform in size and the stuff compacts, reducing the pore space.

You need a good quality potting soil. Many folks make their own (you'll get excellent recipes on the Container Gardening forum) but you can also buy what you need. My preference is Gardner & Bloom Acid Mix, which is recommended for conifers, Japanese maples and acid-loving plants. It is very well draining yet moisture retentive (doesn't dry out too fast) and has good variation of particle size via the use of bark fines and pumice. My collection of Japanese maples and dwarf conifers are all potted up using this mix and I've had excellent results.

There should be no concern repotting your tree now - it will be far better for it than allowing it to remain in a heavy, poorly draining medium. Understand that you will need to water frequently with any permanently containerized plant and apply fertilizer. Every time you water you will leach out nutrients and they need to be replaced. I use Osmocote when I pot up containers and then reapply a small amount each season but any slow release fert will work as well.

Jean's comments are appropriate as well - gravel or shards in the bottom of the pot impede drainage rather than enhance it. Just make sure the container has adequate drain holes.

I don't want to take any chances with this little jewel. First, I have a sizable investment with a 6' multi-trunked specimen like this along with the pot. I thought about taking it from pot to ground but the whole design for this section centers around this tree and this pot. It was planted with the burlap semi intact and then cut away from the top so I'm not as concerned with removing it and replanting as I might have been. It's been in about 3 months I guess. I just don't want to wait and have it get worse before I remedy it. Besides, it's a "memory tree" to honor a very young mother of two that died while we were selecting it.

I don't think I understood the question, then.

boxofrox,
For whats its worth I just had to tranplant a 7' mountain hemlock that was planted last fall in a spot that it just looked ridiculous in, so I moved it this spring to a new spot. It survived the move beautifully. Of course mine was in the ground so that's different....but still. It was also burlaped. Having been at one time, almost exclusively a container gardener I have to agree with garden gal on the potting soil mix. When you water a containerized plant you should be able to see water come out from the bottom hole. I also found that potting soil mixes with too much peat moss would become extremely hard to rewet if you ever accidently let the soil get really dry, so I would avoid those too.You should try to do this soon before it gets really hot. This nice cool weekend we're having would be perfect. Good luck. What a nice remembrace.

If you water it heavily, does water drain out the bottom of the pot? If not, maybe the drain hole is plugged. Or there is no drain hole.

When you water, do you put enough on to soak the planting mix all the way to the bottom? With big pots, it is very easy to have 1 inch of moist mix at the top, and bone-dry mix all the way down from there.

Is the pot located in a hot, sunny area? Mountain hemlocks don't like that, especially if the roots are hot.

Is there a chance that the pot has a lot of lime in it? Is the pot made of concrete? Mountain hemlocks don't like lime.

If I were potting this tree, I would be tempted to use a mix something like this: 3 parts by volume of 1/4" granite chips, 1 part composted bark dust, 1 part good garden loam. This will weigh a lot. If you need it lighter, try replacing the granite chips with pumice or perlite. When transplanting, do not allow the bare roots to be exposed to air for any longer than necessary. The roots must not be allowed to dry.

I would then keep the tree in an area where it gets afternoon shade, probably for the rest of the summer. Shade the pot with wood or stones so that the sun never shines on it directly. Water deeply once every few days. I would foliar-feed with a weak water-soluble fertilizer which is formulated for acid-loving plants; i.e., it will contain chelated iron and maybe manganese.

Jean: I am wondering why putting stones for drainage does not work for you.It has been always working for me.The idea is that the roots will not be water logged and the stones work perfectly.I have been using them for over 20 years and have no problems whatsover.
Has anyone experienced problems with putting stones on the bottom?

I paid a visit to gg48's place of business today and after several consults decided to use a 50/50 combo of G&B's Acid Mix along with the blue label stuff, I think it's called Supreme. Lucky for moi, there was a nice little sale going on so I also loaded as many bales of Soil Building Compost as I could fit along with several roses.

When I got home I carefully removed the tree and the soil did seem to be a little too compacted which I was afraid of, probably from the topsoil I had naively used along with several kinds of potting mixes. The bottom of the pot was concave and had three holes that seemed plugged, probably didn't help that I had seated the pot down originally. So this time I left a void in the center underneath the pot by dishing the material and just having the pot sit on the outer lip. Once I was done, I gave it a reasonable amount of the commercial fertilizer I use on my rhodies and gave it a long drink of water. I'm hoping that will be the RX it was begging for :-)

The pot is located on the north side of the house (actually NE) so it only gets morning sun. That's one of the reasons I chose the mountain hemlock

scarleta, the gravel/shards at the bottom of the container to improve drainage is one of those garden myths that has been debunked based on studies of how containerized soils function. The complexities of the actual drainage activity is a bit more than I feel capable of explaining but it is a recognized physical phenomenon.

As I do container planting professionally as well as personally, the success of container plantings is critical to me and I've spent a fair amount of time researching. One container gardening resource explains it this way:
"ItÂs long been touted that rock, bits of pottery, even oyster shells covering the bottom of a pot improves drainage. However, this method causes an opposite outcome. A shallow container holds more water per unit than a deeper one. Placing gravel or other non-absorbent media in the bottom of a container essentially makes the container shallower, and in return, drainage is compromised. The other problem with this method is that water does not move easily from a soil medium into a coarser material. If drainage is a problem in your containers, switch to high quality potting soils for your flowerpots. If that doesnÂt solve the problem, add more perlite to the medium."

Unless container drainage is very sharp and uniform throughout the planting medium, the apparent need for nearly constant watering can lead to moisture accumulating rather than flowing freely. This is the same theory of soil interface issues that has resulted in the widely accepted horticultural practice of no longer amending individual planting holes in a inground planting situation. This leads easily to root rots or other fungal problems. That you haven't yet encountered this may be a tribute to your skill with container gardening but it is no longer a recommended process to add any sort of drainage layer to the bottom of a container.

When you think about it, have you ever purchased any sort of containerized plant that did have a coarser drainage layer on the bottom? If this was intended to help container culture, don't you think the commercial growing operations might consider it practical as well?

How soil drains depends on its pore sizes, which determine the soil's permeability. Water does not move readily from one permeability to another. The first layer must become completely saturated before water will then move into the second layer. In the case of higher to lower permeability, it makes intuitive sense - like water draining from sand into stone, of course it runs off the stone! But the other way, lower to higher permeability, does not make intuitive sense but is true anyway. That's where you have potting soil on top of gravel - the gravel has much higher permeability than the potting soil because its pores are huge in comparison.

Why does it do this? Because the smaller pores in the potting soil hold on to the water through capillary action, which you see when water rises up a straw in a drinking glass. The pores in the gravel have lower capillary force because they are bigger. So, the water is held in the higher capillarity until the potting soil just can't hold any more, and only then does it drain into the lower capillarity in the gravel.

That in a nutshell is why you should not put a layer of rock or gravel or what have you in the bottom of your pot. I do see it done with styrafoam on cheap potted plants, but there I assume it's done to save money.

I hope the tree recovers for you, boxofrox (love that name!), and lives long in memory of your special woman.

Thanks Reg, it really is a nice specimen and is the centerpiece of this side entrance garden. We have unfortunately been touched by some very sad deaths lately and this whole area has become a memory garden of sorts.

Yesterday, I also found a rose named 'Brandy'. You may have seen the tragic murder/suicide at a mailbox facility in Kent on the news earlier this month. I backed in to pick up my freight and mail just as the shots rang out. The victim's name was Brandy.

BTW, boxofrox is what I ended up after placing 80,000 lbs in my rock garden/pond :-)