Replant four year old pawpaws?

[Joefluff83]

I live in Brooklyn, but am traveling down to my sister's in Williamsburg, VA this year to help with her yard and garden every other month or so. She has four pretty brick raised beds (14' by 6' each?) laid in a classical feel around a Rose ball in an urn. Great potential! She was going to do vegetables, but now wants it to look pretty all year long if possible. Four years ago she planted two paw paws in two of the beds, not centered- and I have been mulling over recommending we Center them in the bed and buy two more of slightly different varieties for the other two beds to make them the focal points and capitalize on the symmetry. I understand paw paws don't like their "feet tampered with." Any other thoughts about this situation?

[rainbowgardener]

A picture would help.

So the beds are very symmetrical around the urn, with a very formal look?

You are right that transplanting four year old trees is difficult and you risk killing them.

In general for landscaping, I would suggest off center and asymmetrical for more interesting design. But the exception to that may be in a very formal garden.



But a paw paw while being a great native fruiting tree, is not particularly well suited for formal designs being large leaved and kind of shaggy:



Personally, I would leave them as is and work for a design that is balanced, but not necessarily symmetrical.

If she wants the paw paws to produce fruit, two of them may or may not be enough. Two genetically different trees are needed for cross pollination. If her two trees are from the same colony or the same set of seeds, they may not cross pollinate each other.