How to Find Free Trees, Shrubs & Plants

Hi this is Yolanda from vanveenbulbs.com. And in this segment we're going to talk about how to find free trees, shrub's and plants. So we all love to garden. You wouldn't be watching this if you didn't love to garden. And we all love free things and for me it's not necessarily free, it's recycling. It's everybody's garbage is someone's treasure. There's probably somebody in this world that can use almost anything that you're throwing away. And I just love it when we can find new uses for plants. And people tell me all the time "oh I've got so many Calla Lilly's, I've got so many Crocosmia, I've got so many Lilly-of-the-Valley and I just keep throwing them away". Well there's a lot of people out there like you that would love them. So the first thing that we can do to try to find free plants is to give away our plants. And it's easy to do. So you can even put them on the side of the road with a big sign that says free. Or put them on Craig's List. And there's a lot of places on the Internet too that do seed exchanges or plant exchanges. You can join a garden club or join a master gardening group or go to a plant sell. Or just Google any kind of search that says plant exchange or free plants and you'll be amazed at what you'll find. And even if you have some elderly neighbors or some neighbors that don't get out in their yard very often and they have huge mounds of Red-Hot-Pokers or huge mounds of Irises, I'm sure if you talked to them and asked them if you could take a few of their starts. Always ask, never just take. And that you help them divide them out; I don't know a lot of neighbors that would say no to that. So there's a lot of ways to find free plants. You can go on the Internet, join a plant exchange groups. You can just go around your neighborhood and find different clumps and ask people if they need help dividing them. You can put postings on different websites. You can out them in the newspaper. And there's lots of different ways that you can find plants. And then even if they're not for free, at the end of the season I think it's such a great value to go to the local garden center or farmers markets and you'll find a lot of plants at half price or one-third price or so cheap that you feel like you're taking them for free because a lot of growers at the end of the season are just dumping their plants. Because they don't want to deal with them for another year. So you can find a lot of good values that way. I found a palm tree at one of the local gardens centers for like ten dollars. But it was in the fall. And I found a bamboo plant like in November for like twenty dollars when it goes for seventy dollars in the middle of the summer. So there's a lot of ways that you can find free plants. Another easy way to get free plants is to take cuttings. So if you have a plant like a bamboo where there's lots and lots of starts, and your neighbor has one all you have to do is dig up part of the root and part of the stem and you got your own. And I'm amazed at how many plants will send off shoots, Lilac bushes all types of plants. You'll be amazed just by asking your friends and visiting their gardens and explaining I'm starting a new flower bed, do you have any donations? You'll find a lot of free plants coming your way. So enjoy them and plant them as soon as you get them.