For several years now, gnarled olive trees have been part of everyday sales in various garden centers and tree nurseries - even hardware stores have jumped into the trade in the indestructible trees.

The range usually ranges from small bonsai, which are barely larger than a coffee mug (cup), to trees of biblical age with trunk sizes of more than 3 meters.

Are the olive trees dug up?

You can easily imagine that such a dwarf grew in a pot even without much experience with plants - but a thousand-year-old tree in a wire basket is a rather anachronistic image.

“You can't move an old tree” is a saying that people like to use when they become cumbersome in old age and no longer want to change - although it also applies to most trees that grow in this world - but not on the olive tree.

Before you can dig up these giants, the crown must be completely cut off, because digging up also tears off a large part of the roots and the tree would have to supply the crown with the remaining strength from the trunk.

“You can move an olive tree every week,” an acquaintance of mine once said - that is an exaggeration, but it is probably true that no tree is harder to take than an olive tree.

When you consider how the trees are treated before they are sold by our plant dealers, as an olive person you can hardly help but smile when you know how much these trees are literally drowned with love and care by their new owners.