Plant Swaps and Swapping Plants With Your Garden Flowers

Last Saturday was one of the best days of my life... I got to do something I love - pick up some new plants and interact with other avid gardeners. And the best part? It was all free! How did I do this? By attending a "Plant Swap" and "Swapping Plants" with other gardeners.

Now for those unfamiliar with a plant swap or plant swapping, there are 2 ways you you can go about it - you can actually attend a plant swap like I did, or you can also informally swap plants with neighbors and friends or fellow gardeners (The swap I attended was publicized on Craigslist a few weeks in advance so it gave gardeners a few weeks to prepare)

Plant swapping is nothing new but the idea of plant swapping is starting to get more popular. With an emphasis now on "saving the planet " by going green, people are looking for more and more ways to recycle, reuse and reinvent traditional ways of using things.

At the 4 hour plant swap I attended there were were several hundred people coming and going - gardeners came with trees, rooted cuttings, seeds, bulbs, planters, landscape materials and even koi fish for the pond! There was a table for people bringing in plants, which were then identified with tags and then transferred to tables for people to browse through at their leisure.

I went with about 70 plants and came home with new things that I needed for my garden - more pots, some annuals, a few new perennials and some bamboo sticks to hold my dahlias up. It was great to see people swooping up my plants as fast as I brought them. I knew they were going to good homes and I was satisfied to go home with some things I needed - all free of charge.

At the end of the day the person who held the plant swap donated the rest of the plants to someone doing a planting project for a patch of bare freeway land - so ultimately all the plants brought found new "earth" to be planted into - and no plants were wasted - very green I'd say!

I don't know about you, but I have a very hard time throwing plants away or giving up on them, so a plant swap is perfect for gardeners like me who want to recycle their plants. I also love to propagate new plants, so being able to see plants reproduce and go onto happy homes is a very rewarding thing for me. I also know I am being responsible to the earth when I recycle and reuse things from my garden.

So if you like to garden and a plant swap sounds like something you'd like to try, check out your areas for a swap, and if there isn't one around, consider holding a plant swap yourself. It's fun, rewarding and of course, very very green!