Plant Swap

A section of a blood banana leaf

Back in my grandmother's day, gardeners regularly traded cuttings, seeds, and seedlings with friends and neighbors. Nowadays, people often buy their bedding plants and shrubs at local nurseries or from big box stores. They hire landscaping firms to make selections and implement designs. 

Too many 21st century homeowners are missing out. Trading plants is not only fun, but it's a great way to save money and discover new varieties, and even new species, at the same time.

This past Saturday I woke early. After dressing, I hurried out to the garden where I dug up and potted nine plants to take to a plant swap in North Charleston. My contribution consisted of 2 yellow cannas, 1 camellia seedling, 1 avocado, 1 oak leaf hydrangea, 1 bushy marigold, 1 cast iron plant, 1 old-fashioned orange daylily, and 1 plant that escapes my memory. 

Participants arrive at Park Circle between 10 and 11 a.m. and place swap items on a stretch of lawn. After unloading my car, I wandered across the lawn looking at what plants were on offer. I saw plenty of Mexican petunias, but since I already have some of those (from two or three different sources) and they almost never bloom for me, I didn't linger. 

Many participants already stood guard beside their first swap choices. I found a blood banana and fell in love with its gorgeous red and green leaves. Actually, I found two of them, a few yards apart. I stationed myself beside the one that stood upright. The other was lying down. A man, helping other people unload plants, came over to me and said, "Thank you for guarding this for me." He pointed to the blood banana. We both laughed. He wandered off to more carry plants for someone. What a friendly, funny man! When he finished assisting the newcomers, he came back to where I was and said, "Thanks," and moved in as if relieving me at the end of a shift. I stood there awkwardly for maybe fifteen seconds before making my way to the prostrate blood banana.

At 11 a.m. the organizer of the event called out, "Select one plant." After allowing participants time to move chosen plants off the lawn, he announced it was time to pick another plant. Later it was "Okay, now pick two plants." After a second "two plant" selection opportunity, it was "get as many plants as you can carry, because I don't want any left over."

I came home with the blood banana ( Musa acuminata ssp. zebrine),  a badly butchered azalea, a regular banana, 2 red cannas with green leaves, 1 canna with yellow and orange blossoms, 1 ginger stalk, 1 named daylily (Hemerocallis "Strawberry Candy”), 2 or 3 wandering Jew starters (not yet rooted), a tiny Japanese maple (a variety with leaves that look similar to those of a cannabis plant), a camellia seedling in poor condition, a tiny angel trumpet, an orchid cactus, a lily of the valley, a couple of small plants marked “blue flower short,” a tiny and possibly-dead miracle berry, and a flame tree seedpod. 

The reason I received more than I gave was because some folks bring lots and lots of one thing, perhaps focusing more on what they want to get rid of than what someone else might want. Others, I think, are more discriminating in what they choose to take home, looking for specific items, hoping to find something they already knew they wanted. The end result is loads of plants in search of new garden homes. 

When I left, all of my donations to the swap had found takers - all except one, that is. A yellow canna remained, still hoping, I imagine, to get picked. 

Japanese maple

A Homeplace Garden

A glimpse of the grounds

Stopping by Virginia's Chesapeake Arboretum with my ninety-two-year-old mother, I feel like I'm visiting my grandparents on the farm. Remember when people grew their own food? In the American South fig trees and pecan trees thrived in backyards. Veggies grew in garden rows. And cannas, hydrangeas, and azaleas provided flowers to be cut for indoor enjoyment. That's what this place is like. 

The Caleb Williamson Farmhouse and its grounds are part of the Chesapeake Arboretum

Canna

Nature's Classroom

Hungry caterpillars

Hydrangea

Japanese cedar

Sprawling fig tree

My mother sits on a bench shaded by the sprawling fig tree as I wander around the old homeplace. Bluejays call to one another from nearby trees. Occasionally one swoops in and devours some of the abundant ripe fruit. A gardener comes over and says we should help ourselves to some figs. I pick one for my mother and she finds it delicious. 

Lovely trio

Places like this one inspire me and reinforce my long ago decision to turn my suburban lot into a homeplace garden.

For more information about the Chesapeake Arboretum, visit their website: http://www.chesarbor.org.

Name that seed pod! Add a comment below.

A Wild and Peaceful Garden

Charleston's historic Unitarian Church

Almost exactly twenty-six years ago I moved to the Lowcountry and embarked on a career in accounting. The first firm I worked for had its offices on King Street in Charleston. An adjacent path ran from King to the cemetery of the Unitarian Church located on Archdale Street. When things got stressful, as they do in the deadline-driven world of accounting, I sometimes headed outside to walk. That's how I first discovered this distinctive churchyard garden. 

Blue plumbago and pink roses

What I love about the Garden of Remembrance is its riotous vegetation. How can I feel guilty about the untidiness of my own garden when here I see the dazzling communion of weeds and cultivated plants?

Lilies mingle with weeds

In 1989 Hurricane Hugo overwhelmed Charleston. Its winds removed the roof from one of the two buildings that housed the accounting firm. The roofer got to work quickly, but not until after photographs were taken to document the extent of damage. I remember seeing the pictures during those first terrible days when the whole world seemed to have turned upside down, a time when armed members of the National Guard roamed the streets and a nearby restaurant cooked chicken outside on a grill because electricity hadn't yet been restored. How ludicrous it all seemed. Those photographs captured an unusual view: in the foreground, file cabinets stood in the roofless attic; in the background, blue sky and the tower of the Unitarian Church dominated.

Garden of Remembrance

Most often when I think of this church, I think of its cemetery garden. I think of the gift of serenity -- of being allowed a chance to calm down before returning to a less-than-peaceful world. 

Canna lily

For more information about the Garden of Remembrance, visit the  Unitarian Church of Charleston's website:

http://www.charlestonuu.org/GetInvolved/Activities/EdenKeepersChurchyard/tabid/132/Default.aspx

My Grandmother's Canna Lilies

“Weeds are simply not allowed to grow [in her garden],” a newspaper article, circa 1950, said of my grandmother, Chessie Pearce. The article went on to report that she “has been most generous in giving cuttings and plants to her neighbors.”    

My grandmother loved to garden. In spite of living on a small family farm on the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina, she managed to amass an interesting collection of flowering plants. Her cannas were among my favorites. She grew two varieties: one bearing spiky red blossoms above chocolate-tinged foliage, and the other, green-leaved, boasting bright yellow petals with orange speckles.

My red canna: a hummingbird favorite

When I was a child my grandmother’s canna lilies grew so prolifically that even extras she disposed of in a swampy area beside a wide ditch grew tall and produced flowers. Cannas hanker for rich, moist soil and she provided it.

My yellow canna

After my grandmother died, her cannas lived on.  My mother planted some beneath our living room windows. While waiting for the school bus during the autumn mornings of my teen years, I watched hummingbirds drink nectar from the red flowers.

Flash forward many years. After I bought the house where I now live, my mother dug up rhizomes from my grandmother’s cannas and gave them to me to plant. I didn’t have much success at first. The plants survived, but didn’t thrive. Some years no blooms appeared. One year, leaf-curlers attacked the canna lilies. The next year I dug up the rhizomes and moved them from my sunbaked backyard to a circular bed shaded by the live oak out front. In the new location, leaves rose from the ground; while yellow flowers rarely appeared, the red ones never did.

Over the years I gave canna rhizomes to friends. The resulting plants performed well, blooming beautifully. Clearly, my friends have less sandy soil than I do.

Two summers ago I created a new flowerbed in the backyard and transplanted several of the cannas into it. Much to my delight, both the red and the yellow cannas gained height and bloomed. Soon a hummingbird noticed the spiky red flowers.

On Rokko Island, Kobe, Japan 

What I’ve failed to mention, up until this point, is that for years and years I searched for, but did not find, cannas that looked like the ones my grandmother grew. I’m not sure why I felt the need to find their counterparts, but I did. My quest to find the red and the yellow cannas continued as I scoured plant nurseries and public or private gardens. Every summer I scrutinized cannas growing in the town where I live, and in places where I traveled, but any red cannas I saw had solid green leaves or the flowers weren’t spiky. Many of the cannas growing in public places had orange or salmon colored blossoms.

Inverewe Gardens: Tropical foliage in the Scottish Highlands

Then, in July of 2010 while visiting family on Japan’s Rokko Island, I discovered the familiar yellow canna in front of a multi-family residence. Two months later I came across the spiky red canna with the chocolate tinged leaves at Inverewe Gardens in the Scottish Highlands.

The yellow canna cultivated by a gardener
on Japan's Rokko Island

The red cannas at Inverewe Gardens, 
a National Trust for Scotland property 

Now I have in my garden a third variety of canna lily. Last year during the Charleston Horticultural Society's annual plant sale, known as Plantasia, I bought an orange flowered canna with variegated, striped leaves. My Internet research indicates this variety is called Bengal Tiger.

How I wish I could have shared the Bengal Tiger with my grandmother. She would have adored its gorgeous tropical foliage.

The foliage behind this orange canna flower belongs to the variety with the spiky red flowers.

And this gorgeous leaf belongs to the orange flowered canna shown in the above photograph.