THE RIGHT MOVES
If you want to shift things around in your garden, now might be the best time to do it
NO MATTER how well you plan your garden or how carefully you group plants together, you’ll always spot something that needs moving. It happens to all of us.
Keen gardeners shift plants all the time. Sometimes they have outgrown their space or don’t do very well in a particular spot. Perhaps they just don’t look quite right with their neighbours and you spot a far better place somewhere else.
However, moving plants isn’t quite like rearranging the ornaments on the mantelpiece. You need the right timing and technique.
Any plant that’s only been in the ground for a year or so will move very easily, since its roots haven’t had time to extend too far out from their original root ball.
So you can safely dig up new trees, shrubs, evergreens and perennials – even things like magnolias and fountain grass that traditionally don’t like being moved – and shift them to a new spot.
The best time to do it is over the next three to four weeks, at the start of the growing season, when any slight root damage will heal fast.
Ornamental grasses, perennials and rock plants are also happy to move in spring and even wellestablished specimens normally move well, since they don’t have a big root system in the first place. But there’s no point in replanting big, old perennials and grasses as they are – you have to divide them first.
Start by digging them up. Then simply sling out the old unproductive centre and replant healthy, young pieces from the edges. Some rock plants produce their own ‘pups’, in which case you only need to detach partly-rooted offsets or rosettes, then pot them up until they make strong new plants and replant those instead.
But delay moving springflowering rock plants until shortly after they’ve finished flowering or you’ll miss out on this year’s show.
It’s the same with bearded irises, which move best about six weeks after they finish flowering. That’s the ideal time to divide them, too. Well-established woody plants are a bit different though.
Evergreens and conifers move best in April or September. For deciduous kinds, it’s winter, when they’re bare of leaves.
In both cases, it’s no bad thing
to trim the tops back a bit first. Besides improving the shape, this means there is less surface area for the plant to lose water, giving damaged roots time to recover after they’ve been transplanted.
You can move climbers too, when they aren’t too big or old, but it’s worth cutting them back very hard indeed, say to a couple of feet. It makes them easier to dig out and at the new location they’ll shoot out from the base instead of having a tangle of long stems that die back anyway.
Magnolias will tolerate a shift. But try not to move grafter plants as you can’t avoid damaging the roots, which will trigger the growth of adventurous buds, producing thickets of suckers.
And roses don’t transplant well, either. After a few years in the ground they develop a big, thick, woody anchoring root, which breaks off when you dig it up. If they survive, they just sucker like crazy. Roses are some of the cheapest of shrubs to buy, so settle for new ones instead. Because they’re worth it.