Is there a forum on Gardenweb or elsewhere to let people know about my "garden for sale"?

Seams gardens are big now and if the house all ready has one that will save the new owner lots and lots of money and time trying to set one up.

I do think it's smart to do some extra advertising. I would start locally though. You could check to see if the Chicago Botanical Gardens has some kind of publication that they send out. Maybe it has a space for classifieds. Some of the larger nurseries might have a bulletin board where you could put a photo and phone number. There might be local garden clubs that send out newsletters or perhaps they would have a place to post it on their website.

Your real estate agent should include something like "extensive landscaping" in the listing. If you get lots of birds and butterflies, it should mention that too. If she/he doesn't think it's important enough to mention, maybe you need a different agent. Something like that makes your property unique so it stands out against every other house that's for sale in the area.

I have also taken many plants to local swaps, given away plants to neighbors or other gardeners on the New England Gardening forum, and also used both CL Free and Freecycle to give away plants when I wanted the recipients to come and dig them up.

I plan to sell off many plants before I move from here, my gardens are way too big for the average homeowner, or even the average gardener (I am obsessed). Also, why not make a little extra $ to pay for your moving expenses? :)

Most homeowners will acquire maybe 30 plants.. and they better have the "easy care, no care, plant and forget" label on it.

What most of us have is extensive gardens, becuase we enjoy gardening and plants and the cycles for plants ect, Its not a plus to have a big garden to sell your house.

Ive gone through this before, my old garden now is gone, the people moved and ripped up all my front perrenial borders and planted a few yew trees. (that included iris, japanese iris, roses, lillium, delphs, lupines, dianthus, asters, columbines ect) However, once you sell a place, you have to give that stuff over as well, unless you agree to take some of it with you (which I did, but couldnt take it all, and wintersowing allows you to grow alot of stuff easily and quickly.

Silverkelt

I don't blame new owners though - it is their house to do with what they want at that point. Which will probably be creating grass, or a play area for the kids, or a pool....who knows!

She does all her shopping online. Never looks at printed stuff.

Before the listing went online, I made sure the realtor included the sentence: "Over-sized sunny lot - a gardener's dream". Hee hee. If my hubby had given any advanced notice, I would have asked them to get pics of the yard when the photographer was sent out.

Per our contract, the vegetation is considered part of the property. (This is either the law in Illinois or just common in property sales.) In any case, I decided to selectively remove or take divisions from a short list of my very favorite perennials *before* we started showing the place. I like the idea of a plant sale - I guess you'd have to do it before showing the house. I just took a few of my dearest plants and made peace with the fact that the rest may wind up neglected or torn out. *sigh* I also told my realtor that I have a nice spreadsheet listing all the plants in the garden which I would be happy to pass on to the new owner - sort of a garden manual.

In case you're wondering which plants came with me to the new house: dictamnus (gas plant) grown from seed and which took 3+ years to bloom. I took divisions of ironweed, joe pye weed, perennial sunflower, blackberry lily, and queen of the prairie. I took all of my little geum "cooky", scabiosa "fama", and bottle gentian. I resisted taking a lot of easy-care plants like coneflowers, asters, etc. and didn't take so much of anything to leave big gaps.

Anyway.. now I'm getting sentimental again. ;-)