WHEN Sheila Batterbury moved to the country she was determined that ten years’ hard work would not be wasted. So she took her garden with her.

Mrs Batterbury, 74, spent almost a year digging up 600 plants, shrubs and bushes before transporting them 150 miles by lorry. It took another six months to replant them.

Now her transplanted garden has won a place in the National Gardens Scheme, under which selected gardens are opened to the public to raise money for charity.

The former cookery writer and her husband, Paul, a retired circuit judge, moved from Eltham, southeast London, to the village of Bathampton, near Bath, after selling their old house to the University of Greenwich, which was not interested in the garden plants.

She planned the move as if it were a military operation, making sure that each plant was lifted and replanted at the optimum time of year. She said: “My garden was my pride and joy so I just couldn’t leave it behind. I moved pretty much everything, roses, wistaria, rhododendrons and azaleas, and completely emptied the entire garden.

“I had to do most of this in the winter, to disturb them as little as possible.”

The plants ranged from tiny blue capanulas or bellflowers from her rockery to a 5ft lilac. The most difficult to remove were her evergreen conifers and a sucker from a fig tree which had to be dug out using a pickaxe but is now thriving in its new home.

She took cuttings from the plants that she was unable to remove, such as the wistaria that climbed up the front of the house. The couple also uprooted a 15ft lamppost from the front garden. On the day of the move, the Batterburys’ furniture left London in two removal vans and the garden followed behind in a third.

The project nearly came to a premature end when she realised that the new garden was too small to accommodate all the plants that they had taken with them. The soil was also completely unsuitable.

Mrs Batterbury said: “I cried when I saw the garden. It was too small and you couldn’t put a fork through as it was too stony. I feared I would never recreate my dream garden.”

Fortunately the couple were able to buy two more plots of land and, with the help of a builder, set about replanting the extended half-acre plot.

She added: “The sloping rough land behind the house needed the attention of a JCB before we could even consider planting anything. We moved in September so the plants had to sit out through the winter months and were battered by all sorts of weather.

“I wasn’t sure they would survive but, to my surprise and delight, they did, so I started planting. Now the garden is wonderful — at the top there are amazing views of Bath, and behind, as a backdrop, are woods which are home to all manner of wildlife.”

The terraced garden now hosts lupins, foxgloves, delphiniums, cyclamens, a range of shrubberies and floral archways. Pathways lead around the garden and there is a pond.

Their garden is among 3,500 private and commercial gardens that qualify for the National Gardens Scheme. It was opened for the first time last weekend at £2.50 per head, raising £300 for charity.

WHAT SURVIVED

• Bergenia, campanula Alchemilla mollis, Kiftsgate rose, foxgloves, wistaria, delphiniums

  AND WHAT DIED

• Rhododendron, peony, camillias, azaleas, magnolia, heathers

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