by Marie Hofer, Gardening editor, HGTV.comWhen we asked you, our readers, to tell us about your experiences moving a garden, we were flooded with mail. Your letters were funny, warm, poignant, all speaking to the difficulty--physical and emotional--of leaving a garden behind or of moving one with you. Here were some of our favorites. Check back again; we will refresh from time to time with more of your stories.
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Wow, 10 years later I still miss my beautiful garden in Erie, PA. Somehow I knew that whoever bought our house wouldn't be the gardener I am so I didn't feel guilty about taking a lot of plants. I left enough so [the] new owners could still call it a garden, and I gave some away to friends as souvenirs.Prior to the move to St. Paul, MN, I spent the previous fall dividing and potting perennials into anything that would hold
dirt--milk jugs, two-liter pop bottles, coffee cans, old cracked pots--you name it. In all we transported 70 pots of perennials.
Fortunately during the month of March nothing was sprouted and the containers all got piled into the dock boxes on our sailboat trailer when my husband drove it to Minnesota. By the time I moved in June with our boys, all the pots had sprouted, and I was delighted to find two low-stacked stone walls hidden by the overgrown yews in our new backyard. It made for a great beginning of my new garden.
What I wasn't delighted with was the shade and the condition of the new soil--heavy and clay-like. [I'm] still fighting that and wishing I had the sandy, well-draining soil I had in PA. Ten years later, many of those perennials are still here. Some couldn't handle the colder climate and perished. Thank heavens for the 'Endless Summer' hydrangeas (although one of those died as well...think that was the rabbits)!
--Jill Bull
The hosta in my front garden is the hosta my father planted 90 miles away in the 1950s. My brother still lives in the family home and is "keeper of the hosta" (and hydrangeas, lilacs, rose of sharon and more, all planted by my father over 50 years ago). Whenever a family member relocates to a home with a garden, chunks of divided hosta are delivered in the spring, from the garden of another family member. Even if a whole garden cannot be moved, for me it's enough to see this piece of family tradition.
--Judy Massey
Dedham, MA
I had worked on my yard for a couple of years, ripping out large areas of brush and sod to create landscaped areas. When it came time to move, I couldn't bear the thought of leaving it all behind. Since I was only moving 1/4 mile and had a month to do it, I decided to take as much as I could with me, including a dogwood, hydrangeas and wiegelias. It was a job digging everything up but even more of a job to place it at the new house, especially since there weren't established garden areas to put things in. Many of the plants just got stuck in the ground until the following spring. The new owners of my old house are not gardeners at all, and every time I go by the house it makes me sick to see the untrimmed boxwoods that were left behind, the beautiful bushes that have been cut out or the weed-filled hosta beds. I love everything I moved and am so glad I did it. I just wish now that I had moved everything!--Kathy Grubbs
Hillsdale, MI
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