How to Move Your Garden When You Move House

You have spent years getting the garden how you want it, and now you are leaving it behind. Some of it can come with you, some of it legally cannot, and the difference matters more than most people realise before they start digging. This guide covers what you are allowed to take, which plants are worth lifting, how to get them to the new place alive, and what to do about the shed, the greenhouse and the furniture.

Sort the paperwork before you touch a spade

Anything growing in the ground is generally treated as part of the property you are selling. Plants in pots and containers count as your belongings and travel with you, but a rose trained up the wall, an established shrub in a border or a young tree you planted five years ago passes to the buyer along with the soil it sits in, unless you say otherwise in writing.

In England and Wales that place to say otherwise is the Fittings and Contents Form (form TA10) your solicitor sends you, where you list what stays and what goes. Add anything from the garden you intend to remove, and do it before exchange rather than after. It is a small job on the form, and an awkward conversation if you skip it and the buyer notices a hole in the border on completion day. If a plant matters to you, list it.

Be honest about which plants will survive the move

Small and young plants transplant well. Mature shrubs and established trees usually do not, because the root system you can realistically dig out is a fraction of the one the plant has spent years growing. A well established shrub lifted in a hurry on moving week often sulks for a season and then dies, which is a worse outcome than leaving it in place for the next owner.

The honest test is whether you could get a spade all the way round it and lift a solid rootball you can still carry. If not, take the plant forward another way. Cuttings, divisions of clumping perennials, seed collected from a favourite plant, or a rooted sucker from the base all move in a carrier bag and give you the same plant at the new house without killing the parent. Gardeners have moved gardens like that for generations, and it works far better than a heroic dig.

Timing matters more than technique

Plants cope with being lifted best while they are dormant, which for most deciduous shrubs and trees means the stretch from late autumn to early spring, and never when the ground is frozen solid or waterlogged. Evergreens prefer the milder shoulders of that window. If your completion date happens to land there, you have the easy version of this job.

Most moves do not land there. Summer moves are the hardest case, because a plant lifted in dry heat loses water through its leaves faster than a damaged root system can replace it. If you are moving in July or August, the reliable answer is to pot things up several weeks in advance so they are settled in a container by moving day, or to take cuttings and leave the parent plants where they are. A pot you have watered for a month travels fine. A shrub dug out the night before does not.

Lifting and packing plants so they arrive alive

1. Water the ground thoroughly the day before, not on the day. Damp soil holds together round the roots; dry soil falls away and takes the fine feeding roots with it.
2. Dig a wide circle well outside the spread of the branches, then work under the plant and lever it up with the rootball intact.
3. Sit the rootball on an old compost bag, hessian sack or bin liner and tie it round the stem. That keeps the soil in place and the boot of the car clean.
4. Pot anything you are keeping for more than a day or two into a container with fresh compost, and stand it in shade.
5. Pack pots upright in open boxes or crates, wedged with newspaper or towels so they cannot tip. Trim any long stems that will snap in transit.
6. Keep everything out of a hot sealed car. Plants travel in the boot with a window cracked, or in the footwell, never baking on a parcel shelf all day.

Live plants travel with you rather than on the removal van. They tip, leak soil and wilt in a dark load space, and like pets and perishable food they sit outside what goods in transit cover extends to. Our guide to what removal companies will not move covers the rest of that list.

The shed, the greenhouse and everything bolted down

Start with a straight question: is the shed worth the trouble? A shed more than a few years old is often held together as much by habit as by its screws, and the floor and base are the parts that fail first. Taking one apart usually means splitting cracked felt, snapping brittle timber and finding the base was never coming with you anyway. Plenty of people are better off leaving it, noting that on the contents form, and buying a new one at the other end. Moving is a natural moment to thin out the garden as well as the house, and our guide to decluttering before a move covers the indoor half of that job.

If the shed is sound and you want it, take it apart panel by panel rather than trying to move it whole. Label each panel and where it goes, bag the fixings and tape the bag to a panel, and photograph the shed from every side before you start. Flat panels, a workbench and the contents all load onto a removal van without drama, so tell your removal firm about them when you book and the crew brings the right space and straps. Heavy or awkward garden pieces, a stone bench, a water feature or a large planter, are worth flagging as specialist removals rather than springing on the crew on the morning.

Greenhouses are a different matter. Old panes are brittle, sharp and often held in clips that have rusted into place, and a full sheet of horticultural glass breaking in the back of a car is a genuine injury risk rather than an inconvenience. Unless the greenhouse is new enough to be worth it and you are confident about handling glass, leave it.

Furniture, tools and the mower

Garden furniture, tools, pots and the mower all travel on the van, provided they go on clean and dry. Wet cushions and soil-caked pots mark everything they touch inside a packed load, so give yourself an afternoon a week or two before the move to hose things down and let them dry properly.

• Drain the fuel from the mower, strimmer and anything else with an engine. Petrol and gas bottles cannot go on a removal van at all, so run them down or dispose of them locally first.
• Wrap glass table tops separately and carry them standing on edge rather than flat.
• Bag the small stuff. Hand forks, secateurs, fixings and hose fittings all work loose in a moving load.
• Stack empty pots inside each other and box them. A loose terracotta pot in a van is a broken terracotta pot.
• Drain and coil hoses, then tie them so they do not unravel across everything else.

If you would rather hand the wrapping over, our packing service covers the garden as well as the house.

What to do in the last week

1. Confirm on the contents form exactly which plants, pots and structures are leaving with you.
2. Pot up anything you are lifting, and take cuttings as a backup.
3. Empty, clean and dry the furniture, pots and tools, and drain the fuel from anything with an engine.
4. Take the shed apart if it is coming, photographing and labelling as you go.
5. Water lifted and potted plants thoroughly the day before you travel.
6. Load plants into your own car last, so they come out first at the other end.

Getting the garden in at the new house

Plants that have spent a day in a box or a bag are living on borrowed time, so they come off the car before the kettle goes on. If you cannot plant them properly on day one, heel them in: dig a shallow trench in any spare bit of soil, lay the roots in it, cover them over and water. They will hold there quite happily for weeks while you work out where things are going.

Water everything in well, keep it watered through the first dry spell, and resist feeding for the first few weeks while the roots settle. A plant that looks sorry for itself in the first fortnight is usually thirsty and shocked rather than finished. If the new garden is not ready and there is nowhere sensible to put the rest of the household kit, a short let in storage buys you time, although anything living still needs daylight and water rather than a unit.

Tell your movers about the garden

Mention the garden at the survey stage, not on the morning. A shed in panels, twenty pots and a workbench change what the crew brings and how the van is loaded, and none of it is a problem when it is on the list from the start. We handle house removals from our Shaftesbury yard across Shaftesbury, Sherborne, Gillingham, Yeovil and the wider Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire area, and the same in-house crew that surveys your move loads it, so what you flag when you get your quote is what the team turns up expecting.

Tell us what is coming out of the garden and we will price it into the move properly, pots, panels and all, so nothing gets left on the drive. Get a fixed quote within the hour.