Just thought I'd share a bit of my experience after transplanting my 3 ft high pachypodium (aka Madagascar Palm) several day ago from a pot into the ground:

- Watered the area I wanted to dig in to soften the hard baked mud. Really, Phoenix should find a way to market all this mud. Maybe we could be known as the mud-bath spa capital?

- Piled the wet mud/dirt into a cardboard box so I wouldn't get it all over my surrounding decorative rock.

- Dug out a nice wide area of dirt so the plant has room grow horizontally, surrounded with some leftover sidewalk pavers

- Let the soil in the pot dry out first, to make it easier to get the plant out (but still it wasn't easy!)

- Used a ruler around the edges of the pot to loosen things up.

- Tipped the pot slowly till on its side; put a blanket underneath, leading to the edge of the ditch

- Used hands to slowly/gently remove dirt surrounding plant in pot

- Very carefully pulled pot from behind, with plant on blanket

- Used BBQ tongs to hold spiky trunk in place, while slowly sliding blanket/plant into ditch

- Used tongs to hold plant trunk in upright position while using other hand to work transplant soil/backfill into ground.

- Watered down deep and patted down to hopefully avoid air pockets!

- Covered with mulch!

So that's that. Hope he survives...so far so good. Just a few dropped leaves but he seems happy otherwise.