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Cheryl Isaak · 12-03-2007, 06:01 PM posted to rec.gardens

On 3/12/07 11:11 AM, in article ,
"Janet Baraclough" wrote:

The message
from Cheryl Isaak contains these words:

On 3/11/07 8:26 AM, in article ,
"Janet Baraclough" wrote:

The header says swap, not shop. Renee's post says, exchange. Swap is
a commonly used English verb meaning exchange without payment, nothing
to do with buying and selling.

Plant swaps are common and popular in Europe, there are lots of
European readers of this group. Slovenia is an EU member state. HTH.

Janet.(Scotland)

I am quite envious! I'd love some folks to swap with!

Don't they have plantswaps there? Why not start one?

Set up a local plant swap, it's easy. Garden clubs here often do it.
All you do is advertise a date and venue, open to all, and invite people
to either bring plants or just come and get plants, free. Usually, it's
outdoors; a large public area with car access is ideal. (I went to one
in a supermarket carpark) Arm yourself with plenty of old newspapers,
card boxes and old plastic bags for people to wrap and carry away
their finds. Late spring or late summer are good times.

Not all the people will have plants to bring, but that doesn't matter;
lots of keen gardeners want to find good homes for their surplus. Many
of the plants will be freshly dug up, in a lump of soil, no pot; but
lots more will be trays and pots of surplus seedlings, rooted
cuttings...you know how keen gardeners always end up prpagating far
more than they can use!

Some of the big plant swaps I've been to attract hundreds of people
from many miles away and thousands of plants are on offer. Some people
bring whatever common herbaceous plant is most invasive in their
garden; but that is ideal for people new to the area starting new
garden from scratch, and beginner gardeners, because the plants are free
and unlikely to fail. There will also be lots of rare and unusual
plants donated by specialists and obsessive collectors with very green
fingers. If it's spring, there will be trays and trays of spare lettuce
and tomato and vegetable and annual flower seedlings, or envelopes of
home-collected seed.

It helps if the donor labels his clump/pot, but very often they don't
know what the name is , or got it wrong by Chinese-whispers, and that's
good fun too. During the Gulf war or shortly after, I acquired a plant
from a swap labelled "Storming Norman". It was that black aeonium
Schwarztkopf. Two years ago, at the tail end of swap, I heard someone
say "I think we'll just throw away this box of funny squashed looking
bulbs, nobody wanted them " So I took them.

Scrawled in wobbly pencil on the big cardboard box was "Irene's,
yellow thing? ". Which may explain why nobody wanted them. The whole
lot grew, and they are not Irene's, or yellow; they are stunning pink
Nerines..

Janet.

There are swaps locally and I know my daylily friends do several, I really
wanted some of the sempervivums listed