Moving plants before builders arrive

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Help! We have building work starting much sooner than expected i.e. next week!

I want to move a bunch of plants, so I wondered if wise green fingered Mumnetters have any particular tips? (Yes, I am going to Google this as well.)

The plants I want to save are a sedum, a large choisya, some foxgloves, a sage plant, a rozanne geranium and maybe some other stuff.

I am a very bad gardener but I love my plants and will be v sad if I lose them all. The idea is to put them all back after the builders have left (16 bloody weeks). Is there any hope..?

Is it not feasible to construct some kind of barrier around them, i.e. knock in some fence posts and screw a few lengths of wood between the posts, just to send a clear message to them not to throw/leave their stuff or rubble in that particular area??

Otherwise, it's a matter of buying some large pots/containers, digging them up and moving them out of the way, which sadly is likely to kill off some of them.

Ok well to start with, the foxgloves I would leave because they only flower once before reseeding. You have nothing to lose by digging up the other plants, it's not the best time of year to do it, but if you take off a lot of the top growth they may survive. Do you have anywhere to keep them while the work is being done? I'd prepare that first. Give them a good water before digging up, then take off at least 50% of the leaves - the roots need to focus on regrowing themselves so don't need the pressure of keeping the top alive! Use a fork to dig up and go around the plant from all angles to try and get as much of the rootball up as you can. Transplant to new spot ASAP and keep watered. Good luck 😊

There is always hope, especially if the alternative is death.

So yes, dig up what you can, and pot them into pots or I used to put a layer of soil in the bottom of one of those 2 ft size recycling bins, and put compost on that and then plant the plants all in the compost so that they can all be kept reasonably watered all summer.

If it helps I've worked in places that had open gardens and what you never see as a punter is the place where the gardeners dig out plants, and just put them all shoulder to shoulder, on thick weed fabric, with no pots or anything, and they seem to stay alive for absolutely yonks, as long as they don't dry out. They might shovel some soil around the perimeter of the batch of plants removed but that's it.

Unfortunately there is no way I can leave them or fence them off 😕

I have an unused bit of veg patch that I am planning to move them to, as I don’t have big pots on hand.

Yes that would be perfect.

Can you not keep the builders off that area? If they're walking over it the ground will be terribly impacted and hell to dig and get back into plantable shape.

Or are they building on the flowerbed?

They are building up to the edge of the flowerbed, essentially, and it will include putting in a soak away. It’s going to be a bit brutal, so I’m trying to be realistic and practical about the impact.

Use your veg plot to heel-in as many plants as possible, don't worry about spacing them out, you are just trying to keep them going.

Don't build a fence around them unless they are a long way from the construction site, that could be come a trip hazard.

Take a bigger root ball than you think possible for the Skimmia. The Sedum will be fine because it readily re-roots from leaves or stems, tge Geranium should be fine. Foxgloves are worth moving to get the flowers but not worth planting back when they’ve flowered as they die anyway.

Thanks everyone - off I go!