garden swap help needed!

16 years ago

Hi everyone,

My friend and I are holding a garden swap tomorrow afternoon. We have passed out flyers, told everyone we know and spread the word far and wide. We did not do any formal advertising because it is the first year and we wanted to do one a smaller one to start with. It sounds like a lot of people are coming, lol.

I'm hoping you guys can help us out with some information. If you have ever gone to one of these how did it work. We figure their are two ways to o the swap, either each person has a booth and you just trade with each other. Or put all the stuff in a pile in the driveway. If you brought 5 plants you get to take 5 plants. Are there other ways to do it?

Can you make recommendations?

Also we are having the people bring garden tools, flower pots, books, magazines etc. Should those go into the main swap or be a separate swap.

We also are thinking of having a newbie area for all the new gardeners with no swaps. This is where we would put some of the more common stuff like daylillies and iris etc. Than we would say each person can have a certain number of plants.

Are these good ideas? I have never been to one of these so I'm just not sure how to work it.

I'd love to hear from people who went to swaps and what they love or hated about the way it was run.

Thanks,

Sue

Comment (1)

karen_w
16 years ago
Well, alrighty, I'm a little late here. How did it go?
I belong to a group that has had twice-yearly swaps for three or four years.
One of our problems was people who bring plants in 2-inch pots and want to swap them even up with 1-gallon potted plants. We now have a requirement that plants must be in at least 1-gallon pots. If we have smaller starts, we put them in a freebie area for anyone who's interested.
People show up and bring their plants to a commom area. We go to a little park, so the plants are on picnic tables. They're labeled, with care instructions and adult size. They also have the e mail address of the person who brought them. If they're not in bloom, a picture is often affixed to the pot.
Everybody looks over the plants and decides what they want most. We have a round robin. Everybody picks the one plant they most want. When everyone has chosen, we all choose another plant and so on until we have the number we came in with. After the first three picks or so, we choose two at a time.
Hope your swap went well.
Karen