Operation garden-move

We put our house on the market in the middle of April. Not the best timing.

In the first flush of enthusiasm I washed the kitchen floor, painted the porch and began digging up the garden. I intend to take everything. Not emptying the garden you understand, but taking divisions and cuttings. The number of pots outside the back door and alongside the greenhouse is escalating fast. Other plants have been moved to the asparagus bed on the allotment. The asparagus didn't want the bed. Those expensive crowns refused to produce a single spear.

Last time we moved I took hardly anything and regretted it. The new owners wiped out the lot. Ironic when the garden was displayed as a particular Feature. The estate agents wanted to list some of the more permanent plants which included a very nice Eucalyptus. While the house waited for a buyer the tree died. Greatly concerned, I rang the estate agents fearing that a buyer would be looking for the tree, since it had been itemised. I gave the agents some amusement anyway.

It is not that my plants are very special, but think of the expense of starting a new garden. And some have to come with me - Aunt Sophia's dark red rose, my tree paeony 'Joseph Rock', my gorgeous irises, Rose 'Abraham Darby, my fairly new Damson tree and my Blueberry bushes from the Dorset Blueberry Company (recommended). It took me ages to find some of the ferns in the front garden, noting their names on visits to Chelsea and hunting them down in garden centres or nurseries on visits to Mum or one of my sons. Clematis are easy to buy, but it took time to find 'Etoile Rose' and a montana called 'Marjorie'.

Our house has not sold, but regularly we look at what is around for sale (in the hopes that it will go eventually and so will we.) It is very hard to buy a garden with a house when you are Small Fry. We are not in the House and Grounds category and unless the garden size can be measured in acres there is almost no information. We squint at photos trying to get some idea of size - there are never any measurements. Words like 'good-sized family garden' are meaningless. 'Family garden' means lawn and nothing else. Courtyard garden means virtually no garden. Mature garden means a big shrub or two and maybe a tree. Amazingly, when I say that a garden is vital I get sent details of flats!

My dream is to grow vegetables in the garden. This is not a pipe dream. Plenty of ordinary houses have decent size gardens - I work in them and how wasted they are and often unwanted. Strange how I want a garden wih a house; many people buy a house with no regard for or interest in the adjoining garden. Communist tendencies aroused again.

With the housing market juddering to a standstill and no-one keen to buy ours yet, I believe I have plenty of time to take cuttings, dig up my huge Allium giganteum - still flowering long after 'Purple Sensation - , divide, divide, divide.