The Diaplant Method

At Diaplant, almost every tree grows in open ground. Not in plastic pots, not in artificial substrate — in earth, in the field, in Amarante. And every three to five years, each tree is lifted, its roots are pruned, and the specimen is replanted in another plot, with more room. This cycle repeats over years, sometimes decades, until the day the tree leaves the nursery for its final destination.

The technique has a name. In German it is called Verschulen — literally, to “re-school” — and it arose in the nurseries of northern Germany and the Netherlands in the second half of the nineteenth century. Carlos Azevedo learned it from nurserymen in those regions and brought it to the 33 hectares of Amarante, where he applies it with the adaptations the Iberian climate and soil demand. In the Iberian Peninsula, Verschulen is virtually unknown. Diaplant is one of the few nurseries — perhaps the only one — to adopt it as its main method of production.

The principle is simple: each transplant forces the tree to regenerate fine, active roots close to the trunk, building a compact, cohesive root ball. At the same time, the crown is shaped, the balance between the canopy and the root system is assessed, and the tree gains a legible history — not only of growth, but of responses. A tree that has been through four or five of these cycles has proved, again and again, that it knows how to change place. The root ball comes out whole. The roots grow outward, radially, instead of circling back on themselves as they do inside a plastic container. The result is a tree better able to establish itself at its destination — and to go on growing once it arrives. There are occasional cases where a container makes sense, and in those cases we use one. But the rule, at Diaplant, is the field.

That work calls for constant observation. Some decisions follow protocol, and some depend on reading the specimen directly: the species, the calibre, the vigour, the transplant history, the behaviour of the root ball, the exposure to wind, the soil that will receive it, and the effect intended in the project. The team knows the origin of each tree, its behaviour and its limitations — and it is that connection that lets us tailor each decision to the specific specimen, not merely to an entry on a list.

Diaplant's method does not end in the nursery either. Choosing the tree, transport, unloading, planting, staking, the first watering and the follow-up are all part of the same chain. An adult tree is not simply produced. It is prepared to travel that whole chain — from our field to your garden — without losing what it has gained over years in the ground.