Five tips for moving with plants to see them arrive safely

Moving with plants is often one of the last things people think about in a relocation, yet it’s an important consideration.

Plants are a beautiful accent that complement living areas. Greenery softens edges, adds colour, improves acoustics, and can even help strengthen air quality. Plants often become part of our daily care routine too, with a regular water squirt, nipping off a dry leaf, or quick pot rotation.

When we relocate, naturally, we want to bring all the little things with us that make our environment familiar, including plants. Moving with plants takes some special care and preparation for safe delivery to your new location without damage or mess.

If you’re moving overseas, it’s time to farewell your favourite plants and find them new homes — but if you’re moving locally or interstate, read on for our top five tips for moving with plants! With nearly twenty years of experience with home removals, commercial relocations, and storage, our crew has mastered the process of successfully moving with plants.

Five tips for moving with plants

Change up your favourite pots

Some of the most stylish plant pots for indoor and outdoor living come in ceramic, clay, or metal. These materials are beautiful, eye-catching, and super heavy when filled with earth and a living plant.

Ceramics and clay also shatter easily. Although we don’t plan to drop any items during a removal, heavy pots are challenging to manage, and there is no second chance for a ceramic or clay pot that slips during transit.

Our first tip for moving with plants is to re-pot as many plants as practical into shatterproof plastic or aluminium pots.

Choose the best and trim the rest

Just as Moving Day is a great motivator to clear out the pantry or the shelves under the bathroom sink, it’s also a terrific opportunity to take stock of your plants.

Moving with plants means making some practical decisions about your favourite greenery. As Moving Day approaches, make time to remove excess or dead foliage, trim loose roots, and make the tough decisions about which plants you really want to keep, and which can be left behind or gifted to a new owner.

Reduce water when moving with plants

With or without La Nina, pot plants are prone to filling up with water, through rainfall or generous hand watering. We probably don’t need to describe how challenging it is to move heavy, water-logged plants.

For every customer moving with plants, we recommend draining excess water, putting the plants under cover for a week before Moving Day to avoid rainfall, and reducing watering for the last few days before the move happens.

Move outdoor plants under cover or place a bin liner over the base of the plant to prevent water from soaking into the soil before your move.

Packaging and boxing plants for transit

When moving with plants, foliage is often vulnerable in transit.

Protect plants with leafy foliage or flowers by wrapping them in a newspaper. Sheets of newspaper help guard against light, the impact of brushing against other items, and are porous so the plant can still breathe. We recommend taping newspaper to the pot and any supporting stakes and winding it around the plant before securing above the leaf line.

At Smart Move, we often line moving boxes with plastic bags to prevent leakage and provide a steady base to avoid multiple pots slipping into each other or tipping during transit.

If a plant has a lot of foliage, put it in a box on its own. If the plant is low or small, like succulents or cacti, its often possible to put more than one plant in a box.

Label with love

Labeling boxes and personal items are the keys to settling quickly into your new home or office. When moving with plants, leave the box lids open until the last minute to let the greenery absorb as much light as possible.

When it’s time to go, label each box to keep track of the plants and speed up the delivery process to the best location at your new address.

Add any special handling instructions too. For example, if you don’t want the box left in direct sunlight.

Preparing for transit

Once the removal teams have wrapped, boxed, and labelled your plants, it’s time to place them in the truck for transit.

Even covered in protective packaging, plants are usually heavy and fragile. At Smart Move, when we’re moving with plants, we only load plant boxes on the floor of our vehicles with no heavy or unstable items stacked around them. If one of our customers has a favourite plant or two, we’re always happy to package the greenery for transit in the owner’s car.

We pack moving blankets around pots which offers the dual benefits of absorbing moisture and guarding against impact. On request, we can palletise
outdoor plants. We’ll do our best to ensure they receive natural light and rain, but Mother Nature is ultimately the one in charge of plant wellbeing on Moving Day.

Ready to get a quote on how to make moving with plants during your next relocation a breeze? Use your green thumb to get a Quick Quote from our website in minutes or call us on 1300 762 786.