I would move it to a large container and not replant it until the tree works have been completed.

yup... pot it .... place it in full bright shade .. and keep it on the damp side ...

and replant it in the next proper planting season ...

this is the corollary to just because you buy a mid summer bargain.. doenst mean july/august is the time to plant a mid summer bargain ...

in this case.. just because you need to dig it up.. doenst mean its time to be planting a transplant ... in mother earth ...

in essence.. pot it.. and put it in your ICU ...

ken

ps: it used to be said. you werent a real gardener.. until you had 100 pots to plant in fall ....

No problem, I have some pretty big pots.

How far out should I dig? It's about 3' in diameter (which I guess is considered fully grown).

I'm guessing that it's OK to heel that pot in, so it looks like it belongs there? Then I can just pull the pot up and drop the plant in in the fall?

Follow up question:

I plan to move it to this garden, which you've seen before in previous threads (sorry for the finger in the pic!):

It gets 3-4 hours of morning sun, but you can see a golden hosta on the left (circled in red below) that's getting direct sun! I took the pic at 2pm, so I guess it's getting direct sun just about all day. I didn't know that until recently, I thought the whole thing was shaded!

There's another green hosta on the right, next to the house (circled in yellow below). It was big and pretty, but a few days ago I saw that something (probably a vole) completely ate the roots so it's not going to survive. Why it skipped the other hostas and went for that one? I don't know. There's a black snake that lives nearby so this isn't usually a problem! But c'est la vie...

To the right of that golden hosta, about halfway between the hosta and the house, is a camellia. Then to the left of the fern is a rhododendron. Both are babies, but in a few years they'll fill up a large chunk of this garden.

So my options are:

A) move the golden hosta to where the eaten hosta is now, then plant the gardenia where the golden hosta is now. That would be best for everything to get the right amount of sun, but it's putting the gardenia in a place where it might have to be moved in a few years as the rhodo grows.

B) leave everything as is, and replace the eaten hosta with the gardenia. That doesn't solve the problem of the golden hosta getting too much sun, but it's a whole lot easier to move the hosta in the future of the rhodo grows in to it.

How wide is your garden bed?

I notice the concrete path which will slowly leach lime, which the gardenia will not like. What other places have you considered, if any?

How wide is your garden bed?

Next to the deck it's 7' from sidewalk to the house.

I notice the concrete path which will slowly leach lime, which the gardenia will not like.

I was concerned about the cement, too :-/ I have a Japanese maple near the foundation in front of the house that was doing pretty poorly until I flushed the roots; I guess that it had lime built up on the roots? But after I flushed it for pretty much the entire season, the next season it was gorgeous!

What other places have you considered, if any?

I thought that this would be the best location, since it gets some sun but not too much. The size of the gardenia was appropriate for the garden, and it was convenient since my hosta was destroyed :-/

I have another full shade area that's pretty big, but I thought it might be too shady.

Everything else I have is direct sun pretty much all day, which is probably too much sun. I'm (supposedly) building a new pond with a new garden this year, though, so I might have a much larger part shade area next year.