Hi. Last year, and for about the past 3 years, I have been working on a garden. It is totally a hodge-podge of plants now, but I have decided to start organizing and moving my plants around. Today and the following week I am going to concentrate on moving and dividing ecanacias of many colors, purple hucheras ( Palace Purple), all of one type, and lambs ears all 'Helen Von Stein.' What I am thinking is having the tall ecanacias, and then the contrast between the deep purple and light green lambs ears. -- There are many more plants in there, but I want to concentrate on these for now. I have a short 3-5 feet tall Hardy Hydrangia for the last row. Question: When moving the plants, should I put in nursery pots for the time being? I would like to dig out the plants to be moved put them somewhere, replace the soil with some more humis and mulch, and then replace the plant. The area is only about 30 feet long by maybe 8 feet wide-- like a border but along a fence. Thanks for any type of info. Will keep you updated.

Depends on the plant, and the weather.

Some plants at my house get put into pots immediately... some when dug with enough soil on the roots do fine when left on top of the soil for months!

and then there's the plan where we shoehorn them together in a whole nother bed created for the purpose.

I must not using the correct search terms... Seems like all the nurseries used to tell how to keep the plants alive when we weren't ready to plant them... Can't seem to find a source of that info.

The problem that I run into with those temporary beds... time passes... plants are still there...

'Heeling in" is the term I learned to describe opening a wedge in the soil in which to temporarily park a plant. Problem arises as Stone described...left in it's "temporary" spot too long, it takes root.

If the plant has a large rootball with a good amount of soil on it, you can also wrap the roots with plastic or old towels and keep it damp for a few days. Best located in shade.

Plastic bags with handles make great temp pots for moving plants around. Whichever method you choose, store plants in a little more shade, so they don't cook/bake to death while waiting to go in the ground.

IME with mulch, it's easier to place after plants are in place *IF* you have enough pots that are big enough to cover plants, or you can keep using the same pots by working in sections. With an pot upside-down over a plant, you can mulch around it so easily.

I just planted all my things in cardboard boxes and set them in bright shade. They ended up over wintering this way, most out of the ground a year now. Problems w the roof/siding project, material sourcing ect delayed the project over the winter and it still isn't done. I didn't lose much, looks like most things are coming back. Cardboard touching the ground of course has rotted out, no bottoms now. But the sides are still intact holding things together, going to refreshen things though since they will need to stay in there a few more months.

Potting them up is advised for long term 'storage', but any container (box, bags etc) that hold some moisture and keep the roots cool will do.

But why would you want to replace the soil? Humus in and of itself isn't soil, it's an organic constituent OF soil that takes a long time to form. It's not instant. Organic matter (compost, mulch etc) will in time turn to humus.