What favourite plants would you take if you moved home?

Before I sold my late parents’ house in 2006 I took a peony and planted in my garden. It struggled in the first year but now produces a nice display each year. I’m not sure what I would take if I moved home, having not done so for over 30 years.

We have plants that originated in several properties back mainly from parents gardens. They in turn have been passed on to friends so if we move, there is the chance to get seeds or cuttings to start them off again.

Whilst we do have some favourite plants – tree peonies and roses in particular, plus flowering trees they are well-established. A large part of their appeal is because they are a decent size now. and it would be a shame to deprive the new owners, plus they might well not thrive or even survive.

Our dozen or so patio pots with lilies, roses, rhododendrons, spring bulbs and harebells, antirhinums (grown from seed years ago), pinks and so on would have to go though – they will brighten up any part of the garden through the year and be reminders.

I’d quite like to start from scratch, hopefully in a garden that is already part-established. We grow a lot of plants from seed – dahlias, delphiniums, lupins, pelargoniums, sweet williams, wallflowers – so it need not be an expensive exercise. The main thing would be to have a decent size greenhouse to get all this stuff growing.

All academic though – no plans to move.

In 2012 we knew we were going to move but didn’t know where or when exactly so we started transferring a lot of plants into pots and tubs so that when prospective purchasers viewed the house we could explain that the garden would be left exactly as they saw it but everything portable would be moving with us. That still left a very well-stocked garden though. We ended up moving to a brand new house with a barren garden so it was just as well that we had an ‘instant garden’ ready to plant out. The move was in December so everything was dormant and survived the move well. During the next five months, after the initial layout and landscaping had been done, we stocked the borders up and disposed the pots and tubs. 2013 was still a work in progress but by Spring/Summer 2014 the garden was looking really good, the climbers had clambered, the roses had risen, and the bulbs had burst into flower; the lighter sandier soil actually suited many plants better than the heavy clay we had before although quite a bit of compost had to be dug in to hold moisture and improve the soil condition in places; indeed the main problem is the extreme dryness and this year we have lost a number of plants in pots because it has not been possible to maintain a sufficient watering regime but since the overall garden is now stocked to over-abundance that is not really an issue and considerable thinning out will be needed later this year.

The plants that did well through the move are most shrubs [especially ceanothus, magnolia, forsythia, cotoneaster, hollies and various small conifers]; climbers have all prospered, especially wisteria, clematis and Virginia creeper all of which have covered the fences and trellises in no time; most roses survived well, mainly the climbing and rambling varieties; and the ‘cottage garden’ flowers [daisies, poppies, lupins, foxgloves, hollyhocks, alliums, kniphofias, irises, narcissi and tulips all look more splendid than previously [but the deer that wander around at night have developed a taste for them].

Dieseltaylor mentioned the expense of moving the garden plants and that certainly is a factor to be borne in mind. The removal company deployed a separate van and crew for all the garden materials, tools, and plants and that probably added £200-300 to the overall cost. But the saving in not having to buy knew stock must have far out-stripped that extra moving cost.

As I am contemplating moving this year I am grateful for the useful advice John re planting transient shrubs into pots before putting the house on the market. I have recently lost a conifer which was growing in a container due to a virus I contracted earlier in the year which rendered me unable to give it the attention and sufficient water to sustain it.

There is one particular plant that I must take with me and that is the buddleia (Black Knight) that I planted in memory of my late son whose hobby was butterfly spotting. It gives me great pleasure to sit in my conservatory and watch the butterflies flitting around and landing on the elongated blooms just as it did my son who knew all the names of the different species as his garden was amass with buddleias.