Long time no see! We recently moved into a new house and I have a very large dicentra formosa in a side garden that gets full sun all day, and is in very poor soil. It bloomed beautifully in spring and continues to bloom now, and the foliage is lovely. However, I read that it really should be in partial shade and in decent soil. I plan to transplant it as soon as possible, I guess when it goes dormant (sometime in fall?). Does anyone have experience with this? I have never had one before. I'm in Central Virginia, zone 7a.
If it's large, healthy, and blooming beautifully (as your post seems to imply), I would say it hasn't read the same article you have, and will be happy where it is (shhhh). Transplanting a large plant is a much larger shock to it than if it was small. You could end up doing more harm than good. If the purpose of transplanting it is to make sure it stays healthy, yet it is already healthy and beautiful where it is, then I don't see the point of trying to move it.
I've found it's essentially impossible to get a straight story about nearly any plant. We got a street tree a few years ago. I found different articles online claiming it will get anywhere from 15' tall to 70' tall, that it is a slow grower and a very fast grower, that it is a hardwood and that it is a softwood, that it will live 50 years or 700 years. In the nursery recently my wife and I were looking at a plant in the native section. The label dangling from a branch said part to full shade. The lable stuck on the pot (which agreed with the other label as to the species of plant this actually was), said full sun. Same nursery has a shade house with a dim translucent ceiling that is really quite shady inside. In said shade house we found a whole rack of plants labeled "full sun." We have planted plants labeled "full shade" in the shade, only to have them suffer until we moved them into the sun, and vice versa.
My philosophy is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The plant will tell you if it is unhappy. This one isn't doing so.
Utopia in Decay -- The future is coming to get you.
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