WAS your garden too packed with plants this year? Did your shrubs grow into one another and end up in a tangled mass? If so, it may be time to think about moving them.

The best time to move shrubs is while they are dormant, between late autumn and early spring.

First, make a plan of where you would like to transplant a shrub, what will be growing next to it and make sure it will like its new situation. It's no good putting a sun-lover into a shady spot or an acid-lover into alkaline soil.

Shrubs which are moved most easily are those with loads of thin roots which aren't deeply sunk into the soil. These include camellia, Mexican orange blossom (Choisya ternata), broom, heather, forsythia, hebe, hydrangea, kerria, mock orange (Philadelphus), potentilla, spiraea and rhododendron.

It's easy to dig underneath the root system of such shallow-rooted shrubs and the plants shouldn't have any problems re-establishing themselves in another part of the garden.

To move a large shrub, dig a circular trench around the plant with a radius of between 30-45cm (12-18in) depending on the size of the shrub and keep digging until you can't see any more roots.

Then push the spade under the shrub, working your way around the circle to enable you to ease it out and free any remaining roots.

You will also need a large piece of strong polythene or hessian sacking on which to place the plant and its rootball. Once you have done that, tie the sacking or polythene tightly around the rootball and water it well.

You can leave shrubs in sacking or polythene for several weeks, but it is best to prepare their new home first so that you can replant them straight away.

Decide where you want the shrub to go and then prepare the ground to give it the nutrients it will need to adapt happily to its new surroundings. Incorporate lots of bulky organic matter when you dig over the ground, removing any weeds as you go, then dig a hole slightly larger than the rootball and attached soil.

Put the shrub in it and make sure that when you refill the hole, the plant will be at exactly the same level in the soil as it was before. This may take a little trial and error. If the plant is too low, you will have to take it out of the hole and put some compost in to fill it up a bit. If it is too high, you will need to dig the hole deeper.

When the hole is right, place the plant in it. If you have used sacking to transplant the shrub, you can slide it out or cut away as much as you can reach. Sacking will decompose naturally if you can't remove it all, but polythene won't so you need to be able to remove it all.

Once the plant is in its new place, add some blood, fish and bonemeal to the soil you have dug out and then use that soil to fill in the hole around the plant. Firm it in gently with your foot to remove any air holes and then water in well.

Shrubs more difficult to move, which have deeper roots, include buddleia, berberis, cotoneaster, ceanothus, mahonia and weigela.