I enjoyed reading your blog especially the swap idea. I have had two Garden Swaps with readers Ive met on the Florida gardening forum. We also share food, and fellowship. We post our Haves and Have not lists and sort of order what we like and if someone has that they make sure we get one and also bring extras for any Newbie gardeners. Regarding your Education hours we always have a special speaker after our MG meeting which counts and also any nursery classes etc. preferably in our county as plants and problems can be different county to county. My agent laughs at many of my ideas and such, maybe it is a way they deal with not knowing how to deal with us. Who knows. Keep up the good work.

Hello, Fellow BCMG here. Glad to see you posted here. I couldn't make it to the sale, but wondering if you might have something for a personal trade. I've just finished harvesting the perennial Blue Eyed Grass. Got a couple other things. Shoot me an email and maybe we can chat. Xtal

Thank you for this, Woody. We have an interesting set of variables in the UK - although we are an island, we have been enthusiastically importing plants for 500 years - I was at my local botanics the other day, lurking round the 'chronological' beds and was startled to see the history of plant arrivals laid out so clearly - but then, as a maritime nation with imperial ambition, not so surprising. We also suffered late glaciation in the last ice-age which severely limited native diversity, certainly from mainland europe, so we basically squeezed a fraction of geological time into a few centuries of avid collecting...and finally, the gulf stream has blessed us with a mild and temperate nation - although we are somewhere on the same latitude as Moscow or southern Scandinavia (z5), the oceanic currents have lifted us into a forgiving z8. We are also very small (but crowded, with only 1/40 as much landmass as the US. Consequently, while the debate regarding natives, invasives and ecological diversity has been elevated in the US, native plants have never really gained much traction here - not least because of the general paucity of garden-worthy contenders...so we are coming at this issue with entirely different assumptions and expectations...for which |I am glad since, although I lack formal scientific training, I do have eyes to see which are telling me that life is both tenacious and adaptable. Not having the vast and empty land masses in the UK, we have never really taken the issues of invasive plants to heart, apart from a small number of obvious contenders, most of them aquatic - Flora and I have often commented on the continental differences here and in the US - so we are coming at this question purely in terms of pollinators. An example which chimes with my personal experience: I garden in the one tiny part of the UK which still hosts the swallowtail butterfly - for one reason or another, this butterfly has gone down an evolutionary dead-end of depending on one difficult and elusive food plant...which also only grows in this area of undisturbed waterways...and as such, they are rarer than hen's teeth - I have seen only one (this June) in my entire life...and yet, the continental swallowtail has a much wider range of caterpillar food plants (although still in the apiaceae family) and, as climate changes are afoot, we are seeing odd sightings of this warmer-blooded butterfly cousin...and so butterfly conservationists are quickly planting up more umbels since if the 2 species have a chance to meet, to breed or even, in extremis, our butterfly may be forced to adapt - LIFE WILL FIND A WAY. And not only do I enthusiastically grow fennel (one of the continental's favourite foods) I am also growing milkweed because you never know. Conversely, in order to deal with one of our more troubling invasives, Japanese knotweed, plans have been afoot to bring in a particular variety of Japanese beetle which predates on this plant...and we are assured that as soon as the knotweed plants are completely eaten, the beetle will also die out. I am not reassured...although this is not THE japanese beetle of wanton wholesale plant destruction (we are told) I cannot help being sceptical that these 'biological controls' are simply going to lie down and vanish. Life is also tenacious.

Hi Nancy! Do y'all still have the place in Hawaii or is that phase of your lives over? I hate this weather, I hate hibernating and I'm ready to get on with the garden but am having hard finding the time. My garden has been shrinking for years as shade encroaches on it, and sometimes that frustrates me, and sometimes I'm relieved that I don't have as large of a garden as I once did. The front garden probably is half what it was, size-wise, at its peak. I just have to be okay with that and know it will shrink more as the shade from the forest continues to encroach more and more. Right now, our son and his family are living with us for a few weeks while they paint their new (to them) old house, built in 1932, and full of charm. All that charm in the form of tons of fancy wood trim and woodwork goes make the painting take a ton of time. I love having them here, but it also completely distracts me from my usual gardening routine. If the wind doesn't blow us all away today, I may get to spend time in the garden tomorrow. We'll see. Dawn