Moving house (or rather, garden). Help please?

Dear friends
I am intending to move back near family in Wales after I retire in a couple of months. As a very keen gardener (2 greenhouses and polytunnel, borders too full to plant more), I have lots of plants in pots that I want to take, and probably cuttings/divisions of some things from the borders.
I am very naive about this, as I haven't moved house for over 25 years. How do movers handle pots (including big glazed ones)? Do you need to pack them into crates?
And how soon ahead of moving would you start taking cuttings, dividing? I have some rather nice specimens of trees (a great acer griseum, betula jacquemontii) of which I want to root cuttings.
I'm looking for good advice from any of you that have moved house recently please!

 

I moved house but my things had to go into storage for a while. So not being able to take plants with me I can't help you with this. However, @Trunky moved about the same time so may be able to give you some advice, if he would be so kind.

 

@CarolineL
Last time I moved (20 years ago) I moved my potted plants myself, as removers were not keen.
They can't stack plants like furniture.
If the glazed pots were empty and could be bubble wrapped or crated they should be fine with the removers.
As for the potted plants I would hire a van and rope in friends or relatives to help.
I thought about moving a lot more plants, but I didn't have a property to move to at the time. Also Essex and Devon have different climates so I took the hard decision to start again when I got settled apart from a few specials.
Also make sure your buyers know which plants you'll be taking.

 

Hi @CarolineL I did pretty much what you are wanting to do about 17 years ago.
I moved house and as much of my garden as I could take came with me. I sold my old house to the owner of a huge garden centre who had zero interest in plants! so no problem with what I wanted to take other than as you would expect I left the garden tidy and filled in the holes where I had removed plants. Nigel is right tho you should ask the buyer if they have any objection to you taking things. Bits of herbaceous shouldn't be an issue but if like me who took whole shrubs then best to ask.
I 100% agree with Nigel re doing a DIY job of moving plants. Removers often won't take "dirty" plants and see no value in them so could care less.
I used a horse trailer that I had and moved over 400 pots of herbaceous plants plus 12 Rhododendrons and Azaleas plus a lovely Japanese Acer which was substantial but not too big to take the move.If you are planning a large move of plants start collecting as big as you can find flower pots. Often nurseries and garden centres will give them away for nothing. I painted numbers on my pots and them kept a log of what was in what. Vital with herbaceous when taking off the top growth to make the move easy. Of all the plants I moved I lost precisely 1. I still remember it was the very nice variety I had of Euparorium (I have a bit of "the lost sheep and shepherd" mentality with plants.
It was hard work but worth it. I would hate to think how much it would have cost me financially and in time to collect so many different plants again. My neighbour where I live now thought I was setting up a commercial nursery! as the mountain of pots of plants grew with numerous trips with the trailer before we had actually moved here (agreed with sellers to bring plants here pre removal).
You may find the Acer Grisium and Betula Jacquemontii are grafted and therefore I don't think root cuttings would work? Personally as it would take ages for root cuttings to become decent trees I'd treat myself to new ones especially the Acer Grisium as in my experience it is pretty slow growing with me anyway. The perfect gift for a friend to give you as a house warming present maybe. Sadly I left 5 Jaquemontii, an Acer Grisium along with perhaps 20 lovely Sorbus plus many other trees all of which were ripped out to make a football pitch at my old house...note to self never go back and see an old garden !'d created!