Nosing around a nursery on a recent trip to Japan I came across this white pine ( Pinus parviflora ) being rootballed, probably for sale. It’s growing in a typical village-style nursery field, basically an empty lot between houses, as a monkaburi tree, trained over the gateway. In fact it might have been a part of the garden originally. You can see that the last few years of growth at the top have been allowed to get away, maybe to start a new extension.
As much work as possible would have done by mini digger, and then the finer work by spade.
Here they’ve come across a huge root - it looks like the tree has been here for quite a while.
Then it’s wrapped in hessian and tied up, before being hoiked out by crane.