Gardenality.com · Gardenality Genius · Zone 8A · 10° to 15° F · Comment About Planting
The Dawn Redwood is a very fast growing tree that appreciates deep, well-drained but consistently damp to moist soil. I would recommend planting it in an environment similar to where you would plant a weeping willow, riverbirch, and other trees that like moisture retentive soil.

Here's my recommended planting method:

1) Dig a planting hole at least three times as wide as the container the tree was grown in (or the root ball) and maybe one and a half times as deep as the root ball.
2) If your soil is heavy clay add organic matter and or soil conditioner to the native soil removed from the planting hole.
3) Plant the tree with the top edge of the root ball at ground level.
4) Using some native soil, build a mounded water retention ring at a distance of 2 feet or so from the trunk of the tree. This will help to catch supplemental water from rainfall and irrigation.
5) Apply a 2 inch layer of wood mulch or pine straw and water deeply.

Gardenality.com · Gardenality Genius · Zone 8A · 10° to 15° F · Comment About Pruning
Dawn Redwood requires no pruning. Dead or broken branches can be removed at any time.

Gardenality.com · Gardenality Genius · Zone 8A · 10° to 15° F · Comment About Feeding
Dawn Redwood require little if any feeding when established. Newly planted trees can be fertilized with a well-balanced, slow-release tree & shrub fertilizer. Apply fertilizer around the perimeter of the canopy after new leaves have emerged in spring.

Gardenality.com · Gardenality Genius · Zone 8A · 10° to 15° F · Comment About Problems
I have seen no serious insect or disease problems with Dawn Redwood. Consistently moist soils are appreciated.

Gardenality.com · Gardenality Genius · Zone 8A · 10° to 15° F
Dawn redwoods once blanketed the entire Northern Hemisphere and were thought to have been extinct for millions of years until their rediscovery in 1941 by a Chinese forester in a remote corner of the Sichuan (at the time, Szechuan) Province in south-central China. Somehow, a little over one thousand trees had survived for millennia in a region that ironically is not even Metasequoia’s ideal environment! How then, did it survive in the Shui-sha Valley when it perished elsewhere? That is one of the great modern silvicultural mysteries. Source: http://www.dawnredwood.org/index.html