Moving Perennials - Moving Houses - Winter Move

by Kathy
(Billings, MT)

I plan to move in 6 months (December in Montana, very cold, frozen ground). Have you heard of moving perrenials to plastic pots in the spring and burying in a neighbor's garden, for digging up the next year to put in your new yard? I would bury to the top of the pot, and have neighbor water, etc just like the plant was planted. I think I might try it, because I would be out the plants either way, if they didn't make it over the winter.

Doug says - I've done it that way twice. It works nicely. But I've also done it in a far easier way twice. :-) Dig a trench in the resting garden - about a foot wide and 8-inches deep. Dig your perennials in September and move them to the trench. Don't space them out, simply lay the roots along the trench (tops of plants out of ground, rest of plant in trench as you would if you were planting the perennial) Put the roots as close together as you can. Stuff them in there. And then cover over the roots, leaving them at the right depth for transplanting.

Water and soak everything to get the soil washing down between all the roots. This is important - because without doing this, without being covered with soil, some of the roots will dry out and die over the winter. So "muddify" that soil even as you're backfilling the plant roots.

You are transplanting and moving them but you're not worried about them growing next spring so you simply lay them close together and cover with soil to winter right there in the gound.

No pots, no potting, no watering and better survival rates.

In the very early spring - simply go to your friend's garden and dig 'em all up again. They'll still be well dormant and won't even know they've been moved to your new place. Plant them in the new place where you want them to be.

Oh and tag everything with a bit of string and wood tags. I'm still trying to figure out which hosta is which and the garden design gets moved a lot because I didn't know which were the blue leaved hosta and which the gold. What color were those daylilies? Etc etc. A bit of labeling would have saved me a ton of time watching them all grown again to see what I had and what had survived (almost everything survived).