Last year we started a new gardening tradition: a plant swap party. At the end of the summer we invite people over for a barbecue and ask them to bring a plant or plants from their garden to share and then we all swap. We started it in part because we had too many irises and needed to split up some crowns. But, the party is fun too and we enjoy showing people around the gardens. It's a pretty neat idea and we've gotten some really interesting and lovely plants from people. One of my favorites is Lady's Mantle which is a low-growing flower with sectioned leaves that catch the rain or dew and make them sparkle. The plant is unusual, and I love the feathery, light-yellow flowers it puts out.
This year we had bad luck with the weather - cold and rainy. But Kevin dug up our plants anyway and we had our glasses of wine on the front porch. My prize for this year is some purple coneflower donated by my friend Lynne. We didn't have any and I've always wanted some. This year we gave away a lot of tall phlox, thinning out most of our flower beds. This will be good for the plants and give us room in the gardens to space things out and show off the lower growing plants like the mini-daylilies we bought this year.
I'm sad that fall has arrived, but this is a nice end-of-season tradition. It gives me something to look forward to in the spring.
