Beginner Gardening: digging up and transplant tips, 1 by Janiejoy

Janiejoy wrote:
Hi,

My good friend lives in the house we left last June. They care NOTHING about gardens or plants. The last time I was there I noted that they had weeds over 8 feet high in their front yard and that several of their shrubs were brown and of course, dead. (How on earth do you kill a baby pine tree???)

They warned me yesterday that they are about to CUT EVERYTHING TO THE GROUND and begin mowing and weed whacking instead of trying to determine what is an herb and what is a weed and managing a garden.

This includes a wonderfully seasoned raised bed that yielded me over 100 pounds of tomatoes, and a pair of side beds that were full of cutting flowers and herbs I planted from bare ground... some from seed, some from plants. It was this garden that I was tending when I first found Dave's Garden 2 years ago!


Since they know how much it meant to me and how upset I would be if they destroyed all those plants, they said to get whatever I want OUT before they commence destruction.

I THINK the following things are still there (if they have not somehow destroyed them already)
shasta daisies, one big plant and a bunch from seed
cilantro that SHOULD have seeded itself
moss curled parsley and Italian parsley
lemon grass
purple coneflower
monarda petite delight
rudbeckia with a green eye (Irish eyes?)
rudbeckia that has orange/gold petals and a black eye, no two alike
TONS of scarlet morning glories
lemon thyme
thymus vulgaris
French tarragon
Greek oregano
Common sage
Chives
Munstead Lavender
Lavender
Stevia
chocolate mint
"vicks plant"
spearmint
lemon mint
peppermint
regular normal black eyed susans
lamium that gets a pink flower
fragrant bouquet hostas
daylilies (hemeracaulis lily)
gooseneck loosestrive
digitalis (foxgloves)
euonymous
various bulbs (not sure where they are now!)
coral bells
lungwort
russian primrose (or that is what my sister's MIL calls it)
columbines (various)

Wow, I had forgotten how much work I had done in those gardens!

Here are my questions:

1. Is there any special handling that I should do when digging up these plants and transporting them to our garden? It's only about a 25 minute drive to and from.

2. Can I divide the big ones and plant them in different spots or should I see if they live first?

3. They would like the beds "put to sleep" so they don't have to mess with them anymore - if I use cheap black plastic trash bags cut open and some kind of mulch to weigh them down, would that serve to kill the remaining weeds and give them a "no brainer, no plants" area where the beds used to be?

Thanks in advance for your assistance. The big day is this coming Tuesday !!!!!

This is how the flower garden looked back on July 7, 2001.