Moving house - moving some plants - any advice/help?

[MrsBungle]

I am moving house on Thursday. When we moved to our current house the garden has a small patch of grass and the rest was decked. We've tried hard to make the garden nicer and have planted quite a lot and it now looks quite nice, I want to take some of my plants with me to the new house (which will be a whole new thread as the garden is big and has an area like an allotment with 6 raised beds).

The plants I really want to take are: a camellia - it is now around 9 years old. I bought it when it was 7 years old. An ornamental sage - just because I love it and it is lovely and big and bushy; a small acer and a little holly tree (which is not looking healthy - it had black leaves which I removed last year - they have gone but it still looks sparse.

Would these survive a move? Any tips?

Thanks so much for any help,

[shovetheholly]

Yes, you can definitely dig them up and move them! Try to get as much of the rootball as you can, and to leave the soil around it as intact as possible. And whack them into pots for temporary storage.

With the sage, it may be worth looking at the base to see whether the plant has 'layered' itself. This is where roots develop from bits of the stem. It may mean that you can chop off a small part of the plant to take (thus reducing water stress) rather than the whole thing. I recently moved a bit of a sage plant from my back garden to my front garden like this.

[ChuckBiscuits]

I wouldn't use pots to move them, whenever I have moved larger plants successfully I have used rubble sacks, dug around as much of the root ball as possible, put into the sack, watered into the sack [not alot, just to keep the roots damp - they don't have holes so don't leak] and then tied the sack up around the stem. Or tape it up.

I'd also do it the very nearest to moving that you can. So that the disturbance is minimal.

I kept a fig alive for 2 years before planting it into it's final home this way.

I'd not bother with the holly if it isn't looking healthy. uprooting it could make it worse. I'd leave that and if I wanted another, just buy one when you have moved.

[shovetheholly]

Wow, I didn't know you could leave things in sacks that long! Thanks for the tip!

[MrsBungle]

Thank you so much both of you. I actually do have some rubble sacks! Brilliant idea.

[shovetheholly]

Good luck with the move! I will be thinking of you and hoping you, your furniture, and your plants arrive in one piece, without too much stress!