How to Organize a Plant Exchange in Your Neighborhood

As any gardener will tell you, gardening can be an expensive hobby. There's soil aid, peat moss and manure to purchase, mulch, and all those hoses and gardening tools ~ and that doesn't even include the plants and shrubs.

To help new property owners landscape their yards, our association holds a yearly neighborhood plant exchange. Neighbors bring seed pods they've collected, bulbs they've dug up, and hundreds of potted volunteer plants and trees. There's no charge to participate, and neighbors are free to take as many plants as they have available space. The neighborhood plant exchange is a great way to meet new neighbors while beautifying the neighborhood for free.

How to get started

At your winter or early spring neighborhood meeting, make a brief announcement about the neighborhood plant exchange program. We usually schedule the date for mid May which is about the time of our last frost snap, although anytime in late May or early June will also work.

Ask all the neighbors to participate by saving seed pods and transplanting those spring shooters or volunteer plants and trees into plastic pots. Most people who are avid gardeners know how to properly transplant new seedlings ~ for those who don't, invite them to stay after the meeting for a brief instruction. Seedlings transplanted in March and April will have a well established root system by the time of your plant exchange.

Don't have enough plant pots for the event? Ask some of your gardening neighbors to bring their old flower pots to the meeting to share with those who don't have any. If there aren't enough pots to share, suggest other containers that will work equally as well, such as yogurt, deli, and cottage cheese containers. Don't forget to pierce holes in the bottom of the container for drainage!

Transplanting the plants

The rules of the exchange are quite simple. No weeds or unknown transplants are allowed and every plant or seed must be identified.