In the past I have arranged a few unusual seed Round Robins, but because of the rising postage costs this has become not as attractive as it once was. It was also not ever worth it for newbies with only one or two sorts of unusual seeds.

So, this year I think I'm going to organize an unusual seed exchange. I will not officially get it off the ground until September, but I am giving some advance notice so that interested people can set aside some of their unusual seeds. Costs should be about $2-4 for postage (depending on how many seeds you send), about 50 cents for a padded envelope and whatever seeds you want to send.

There is no official definition for what is and what isn't unusual - you will have to use your judgment. Unusual seeds are seeds that are off the beaten track - ones you don't find in the Vesey's catalogue (for the most part). Seeds for houseplants or other tropical plants are unusual. Seeds for native plants are unusual. They can be seeds for plants that are commonly seen, but not commonly seen sold as seed - Peonies, Hostas and Daylilies, for example (they can provide some surprise beauties amongst their offspring). If you can buy it at a Canadian Tire Garden Centre, it's probably not unusual (unless you have a really good Canadian Tire!). White Cosmos or white Echinacea are not unusual. Wave petunias and Teddy Bear sunflowers are not unusual. I will be contributing some Eucomis, Actaea (Cimmicifuga) racemosa and Astilboides tabularis seeds (provided they continue to ripen without disaster :-)), some Hosta and Calla seeds, and who knows what else my garden will produce!

This will be a blind exchange - you will not know what you are getting back because I won't know what seeds everyone contributes until I get them all in. You can make suggestions as to things you would like or dislike and I will honor them where possible. I will allow participants to send in several packets of the same seed - if you send in five packets of Primula japonica seeds, you should get back five packets of five different things.

If you have never done this sort of thing before, the way a seed exchange works is that you send me a bunch of your seeds in a padded envelope, along with about $2 in postage, and I swap your seeds with those sent in by other people and send them back to you in your envelope, using the postage that you sent.

If you're interested, ask questions here. This is not the sign up thread - I will post that in about a months time (the deadline for participating will be the end of November - I want everyone interested to be able to collect all the seeds they're expecting).

BP