The bounty of the garden. Share or compost?

Sell, swap, give them away or compost. This is something serious gardeners have to consider at this time of year because growing plants can result in too much of a good thing.

I can’t think of any other pastime where the return can far exceed the investment of time and money. It’s not so much that plants increase in value — breeding of rare ones being the exception. They increase in quantity, and that’s somehow unfair for those in the business of selling plants.

The two main windows of opportunity, spring and fall, are short for retailers, and yet they’re in competition with countless gardeners who have been so successful they have to find a way of unloading all the progeny of plants they once purchased.

This can be in the form of seed collected from annuals and perennials, plants that have reseeded or reproduced, and those that have excelled beyond expectations. Then there are others the gardener has simply grown tired of.

This means there’s a huge number of plants flooding the cheap or free market in the form of plant swaps. Swapping and sharing is something gardeners have always done. It was once the only way to add new plants to their gardens.

Swaps have become even more popular, and they’re fun because you never know what you might find — maybe that rare variety of day lily you’ve always wanted, heirloom vegetable seeds, or even a shrub to complement your overall landscape design.

If there’s a positive side to this for the poor retailer, it’s the expanding interest in gardening, and when someone is hooked, they’ll be ready customers for anything new and exciting.

I have new plants in pots waiting for a space to open up in already crowded flower beds. And with the number of plants crammed into my garden, there are always other pots sitting by the gate waiting to be handed off to the next visitor, usually with the explanation that it’s not a gift, rather something they’re doing me a favour by accepting, and that’s after I’ve exhausted friends and family as recipients of my garden’s largesse.

In fall, a perfect time to be digging and dividing perennials, I’m further reviewing what needs to stay and what needs to go, and so there’s always plenty that I’m more than happy to contribute to a plant swap. The trouble is, I’m more than likely to come home with as many plants as I’ve shipped out.

Unfortunately, there are certain plants that always appear at plant swaps but are best avoided. These are the ones that simply grew so well that someone felt they should be shared.

This includes the particularly invasive ones like lily of the valley, gout weed, or chameleon plant. Sure, they’re pretty enough, and there may be appropriate places to for them, such as a highway median in another province. But too many new, innocent gardeners have gone home from a plant swap happily clutching something that has the potential to bury that joy.

If someone offers these or even something worse, say rooted cuttings of trumpet vine — beware! Paraphrasing a line from the Eagles’ song “Hotel California” — you can stab it with your steely hoe, but you just can’t kill the beast.

It’s bad enough that above plants are still sold at garden centres — and I don’t know why — when something is more likely to

cause frustration than endear someone to the joy of gardening, and become a return customer.

However, when they’re offered for free they can be hard to resist.

Plant swaps are the garage sales of the garden world. You can be sure there will always be treasures to discover.

On Thursday, Oct. 5, Wilmot Horticultural Society celebrates its 50th anniversary with a gala featuring Paul Zammit from Toronto Botanical Gardens. For tickets and info, contact Ruth Trussler at 519- 696-2931 or ruthetrussler@gmail.com.

To chat with local gardeners, share tips, pics, or discuss plant swaps, see Grand Gardeners on Facebook at www.facebook.com/groups/Grandgardeners/.