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Friday Favorite: Sharing

November 14th, 2014

One thing I love about the gardening community is the sharing. Gardeners are a generous bunch, always willing to gift clippings, cuttings, and plants to others. I’ve been on the giving and receiving end of this kind of generosity many times in my short gardening career. About a month or two ago I mentioned on my Facebook page that I was thinning my strawberry plants. I offered plants to any locals that needed any. No locals had space, but I had a few friends from afar that wanted a few. When the weather cooled and the garden dried out, I dug 25 plants for each of them.
strawberry plants
My strawberry plants will live in Maryland and Chicago. That’s the beauty of sharing plants, it’s a way for our gardens to ebb and flow beyond our property lines. I have plants that came from my grandmother’s home, they first went to my mom and then came to me. They were probably given to my grandmother by someone in her community. I have old fashioned comfrey, peonies, and lily of the valley from her garden.
lily_of_the_valley
comfrey
My mom also has many plants in her garden that came from me. Hydrangeas I started from cuttings, seedlings of my Sweet Autumn Clematis, and one particular tulip that called ‘Mickey Mouse’ which was one of the first things I ever planted in my Ohio garden 12 years ago. The bulb was transfered with a start of a hosta. Since these tulips actually multiply, she’s going to give me a bulb or two for my garden here in Maine. And so it goes from me, to another garden, and then comes back around to my garden once again.
mickey_mouse_tulips
There are plants in my garden that came from neighbors in Ohio, I moved them to Maine with me. I know there are cuttings from plants in my garden in many gardens in Ohio and a few faraway states. Sharing plants is really the way of the gardener! In a way it can be a savings account of sorts. I have so many plants that I was unable to bring with me from my gardens in Ohio. Thankfully, my mom has many of them in her gardens since she received starts/cuttings from me. Next summer I plan to head back to finally start stocking my garden with some of my old favorites once again. The best part is that they are FREE. They do take more time than purchasing plants, but the story behind them more than makes up for the extra time it takes them to mature.

Do you have any plants in your garden you received from fellow gardeners? Have you ever gifted cuttings/plants/roots/bulbs?

7 Comments to “Friday Favorite: Sharing”
  1. Megan on November 14, 2014 at 7:52 am

    Most of the hostas that I have came from my mom. I thinned my strawberries last year and gave them to my grandpa. I have also received raspberry plants and given some away. I love free stuff for my gardens!

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  2. Nebraska Dave on November 14, 2014 at 9:45 am

    Susy, I received a rose bush and some strawberries from a person that lives across from my newly acquired property. The rose bush was transplanted to my property because of extensive work that going to be done to her property and the rose bush had special meaning to her. The strawberry plants went to Terra Nova Gardens in a raised bed that I had prepared. It’s about a 30 foot bed that three feet wide with expansion room for another 30 feet. I do have a lead on some blackberry bushes will be thinned out but I have got a space ready for them just yet. I always wanted to get some of my grandmothers Holy Hocks but never made it there at the right time to capture the seeds. It would have been nice to have something to remember her by each spring and summer.

    Have a great sharing garden plants day.

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  3. sarah on November 14, 2014 at 10:40 am

    I’m impressed you’d need to thin your strawberry plants. Mine always seem to get eaten by caterpillars faster than they can spread.

    Reply to sarah's comment

  4. Amy on November 14, 2014 at 7:07 pm

    My across the street neighbors and I have been sharing perennial plants for at least 15 years. I keep wondering if our yards are going to eventually look exactly alike. Funny thing is we have completely different ways of organizing them and so far our yards look very different.

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  5. Charlie@Seattle Trekker on November 14, 2014 at 7:31 pm

    The plants handed down from family members are unquestionably the favorites in my garden.

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  6. Kristen on November 15, 2014 at 1:11 am

    I have strawberries from friends, raspberries and hostas from my parents, peonies from a friend of my mom and iris from a neighbor. I start many of my own seedlings in the spring and have shared many of those with friends. It is nice to share and also to reap the extras of others.

    Reply to Kristen's comment

  7. Jenelle Jordan on November 17, 2014 at 2:23 pm

    We have lilly of the valley from my Grandmother’s garden! Most of my memories of my grandparents are attached to smells, the cedar in the attic, the leather of the cadillac, the way her afghans smelled, my gradfather’s chewing tobacco, the fish eggs he tied spawn bags with, the solder burning as he made jewelry, the smell of the shavings from his pencil sharpener on his desk, the hand lotion she gave to her beauty shop clients, her yeast rolls rising, and of course the cuttings of lilly of the valley that were all through the house in the Spring!

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This is a daily journal of my efforts to cultivate a more simple life, through local eating, gardening and so many other things. We used to live in a small suburban neighborhood Ohio but moved to 153 acres in Liberty, Maine in 2012.

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