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Please, Pass the Flowers
Southern Living, May 2005 by Bender, Steve
Don't stash away your garden's treasures. Share them with friends.
Plants are meant to be given away, not hoarded. You know this if you've been gardening in the South very long. Passalong plants link friends, neighbors, and generations. Each time you see one of these blooms in your garden, you remember the person who gave it to you.
Fortunately, many annuals and perennials are easy to share. Some, such as poppies, bachelor's buttons, and larkspurs, produce a bounty of seeds you can collect and pass along. Others, such as hostas, fernleaf yarrows (Achillea filipendulina), irises, daylilies, and asters, are readily divided using a garden fork or shovel. That's why Mississippi garden writer Felder Rushing jokes, "Anyone who doesn't have any hostas, irises, or yarrows must not have any friends."
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Time It Right
Knowing when to share is important. For reseeding flowers, such as zinnias, poppies, Shasta daisies, and columbines, collect seeds either by pulling apart the old flowers or by opening mature seedheads in summer or fall. Seeds should be dry and hard, not soft and green. Perennials are best divided when they're not actively growing and blooming. This usually means late winter, early spring, late summer, or fall. Winter is also okay in the Lower, Coastal, and Tropical South.
Word to the Wise
Though the sharing of plants is by its very nature a generous act, always be a little suspicious of a plant someone seems very eager to give you. There might be a good reason. For example, perennials such as hardy floss flower (Ageratum houstonianum), swamp sunflower, pink- and white-flowered yarrow, and artemisia are simple to divide because they spread like wildfire. "White yarrow was the first plant that I got from somebody that I absolutely tried to get rid of later," recalls Felder. "And I did. I told my brother he could have all he wanted for his new mother-in-law. So he came and dug it all up."
Hmm...it sounds to me like that mother-in-law could have used one fewer friend. STEVE BENDER
Copyright Southern Progress Corporation May 2005
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved
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