Stumped by Tree Troubles? We're Here for You! - Get Your FREE Estimates!
Stumped by Tree Troubles? We're Here for You! - Get Your FREE Estimates!
By
Big Easy Tree Removal 
Feb 26, 2026 
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Dig the planting hole two to three times as wide as the root ball and no deeper than the root ball itself. In New Orleans, digging deep is actively harmful, because a deep hole in dense clay holds water like a basin and drowns the roots. The tree should sit on undisturbed soil with its root flare visible at or above grade. Big Easy Tree Removal helps New Orleans property owners get planting depth and drainage right the first time.
Table of Contents
The advice to dig a deep, generous hole and fill it with rich soil is the most persistent bad guidance in gardening, and in New Orleans it is close to a death sentence for a young tree. Our soil is dense, our water table is high, and a deep hole dug into clay does not drain. It fills. What people picture as a comfortable bed for the roots behaves like a bucket with a tree standing in it. Getting hole geometry right here is not a refinement, it is the difference between a tree that establishes and one that quietly declines over three seasons. Here is how Big Easy Tree Removal approaches it on local properties.
Make the hole two to three times the width of the root ball, and exactly as deep as the root ball or slightly shallower. The tree must rest on undisturbed soil at the bottom, never on loose backfill.
Width and depth do completely different jobs, which is why the advice is asymmetric. Width helps. Loosening a broad area of soil around the root ball gives new roots an easier path outward, and since roots spread laterally rather than plunging downward, that is exactly where the help is needed. There is no such thing as too wide.
Depth hurts. Any soil you loosen beneath the root ball will compress under the weight of the tree, and the tree settles. A tree that settles two inches ends up with its root flare buried, and buried flares are one of the most common causes of slow decline in young trees. Digging to the exact depth of the root ball and no further eliminates the problem entirely.
The measurement that matters is the root flare, not the top of the soil in the container. Nursery stock is frequently potted with excess soil over the flare, so scrape back the surface until you find where the trunk widens into the first structural roots. That point sets your depth, and it should sit at or just above the surrounding grade when the job is done.
This is the local mechanism that makes standard planting advice fail here, and it is worth understanding rather than just following a rule.
Dense clay conducts water very slowly. When yo