I think the last challenging install I blogged was palms bolted to the end of Bournemouth Pier, which incidentally are still going strong. This time we were at a private house in Branksome installing a very big plant. But this was a cracker:
1. The photo shrinks it: that's 3m from soil to tip, and as heavy as that implies. Incidentally, it was a lovely example of the Dracaena Song of Jamaica - one of my favourite large specimen plants.
2. The pot is about 1.8m high.
3. The pot (the client's own) was not watertight, which is kind of a must indoors.
4. The approach is from the left of the photo with a relatively low ceiling.
5. Once in the pot we'd never get the rootball out of the growing pot, but if we removed it first we wouldn't have anything to hold on to.
So.... we carried the plant in top-first then some of us carried the head up the stairs while the rest of us carried the rootball in an old bulk bag and lifted it on to the top of the pot. So the plant is now diagonal across the banister. We then whipped the bulk bag off (like a waiter removing the tablecloth without knocking over the glasses) and plopped the plant in the hole.
Oh, and I'd previously cut a double layer of pond liner to size so that when the plant plopped, it formed a waterproof layer round itself.
Re-reading that makes it sound easy. Holding a 50kg plant vertically and 1.8m off the ground while someone pulls a bag out from under it is no mean feat. You name it, Stewarts can install it!
Jonathan