A friend offered me this tree in June. She said if I could get it out of her yard I could have it.. so we dug it out and bought it home. We planted it in well fertilized soil, staked and watered it faithfully. It was just starting to bloom when we bought it home. Up until a few days ago it looked great but it now appears to be dying.. All the leaves on the top have dried up and each day it looks like more are dying. We damaged some branches in transit so we cut them off and a bit of the bark got scrapped so I'm wondering if it has just recovered from the shock of moving it and its getting tired of trying to make it.. Can you suggest anything? Its about 15 feet high.
I too transplanted a Japanese snowball tree this spring. It was also blooming and we had damaged some branches in the transplant, but my tree is doing extremely well. So stress from the transplant may not be the problem. Maybe over fertilized when you did the transplant. I just used triple mix and compost when I transplanted mine.
Deciduous trees and shrubs often shrivel if transplanted in leaf, although this usually happens right after the operation. Yours may just need to be watered more. Choose and apply fertilizers based on sampling and testing of your soil. It's snowbell, rather than snowball. Plants called snowballs have ball-shaped flowerheads, rather than small, bell-like flowers as this does.
