Moving house - AND garden??

[BugBear99]

Wondered if anyone could give me suggestions...I've lived in rented accomodation for over 2 years, in that time transforming my little London terrace garden from overgrown mess, to wildlife friendly haven.

In a couple of months, though, I am moving house. I have spent a lot of money on buying the plants in my garden, and am almost certain the next occupant will not look after whatever I leave behind. So I'm thinking of taking some plants with me. The ones in containers will be easy to transport, but I have some shrubs + perennials; cotoneaster, pyracantha, honeysuckle, etc, that I would like to take with me. They are all about 60-80cm height/width and have been there for about 2 years so are relatively established, but not huge.

I am happy to leave behind the tough geranniums, pansies, london pride etc, as I can easily get more of these from my Mum's garden. My question is, how easy will it be to move the larger plants out of the beds? Will I kill them?? They may have to temporarily live in containers until I can get my own place, too, might this harm them, since they're not used to it??

Perhaps I should just leave them here, and buy more plants when I eventually settle down??!!! I'll be sad to leave my little garden!

[Farplace]

Personally, I would risk it. Put them into containers and take them with you.

[Dorts]

If these shrubs have only been in the beds for a year or two, they will move very easily. You may get some die-back after re-planting, but keep them well watered for the first year and they should be fine.
Just try and avoid the roots drying-out when moving them.
Dorts.

[Wild-Woman]

I can understand that you want to take them with you but perhaps if you've established a wildlife haven in your garden, the next occupants may like to continue your good work- you never know. Would it be worthwhile putting together a little ' maintaining a wildlife garden' manual for them explaining what plant is what and what they are good for? Just a thought.

[BugBear99]

Thanks for your thoughts everyone
I had thought about leaving them here and telling the next occupant what they all are/why they should be looked after. They're all very low-maintenance, but I inherited some very persistant weeds that still need digging up whenever they appear otherwise they'll take over like when I moved in, and there's also an invasive buddhlia (sp?!) + tree/shrub thing (don't know what it is) that grows crazily every year, so unless they're kept on top of then everything else with get outgrown/shaded out. Ooh tricky!! Weirdly I will feel guilty leaving some of the plants behind after all my TLC! It feels like abandonment!