The Great Library Seed and Plant Swap 2018

Spring is on its way and to celebrate the season of growing and gardening we are hosting seed and plant swaps in the first half of September.

Bring in your extra seeds and small plants and we’ll put them out to share.

The Great Library Seed and Plant Swap display, South Library, 13 August 2018, File reference: 2018-08-13-SO-IMG_1345.jpg

We welcome vegetable, herb, flower, native, and heritage seeds. You can bring any spare potted-up seedlings. Seeds can be dropped in anytime before or during seed swap season, 1 – 15 September.

The Great Library Seed and Plant Swap: Where and when

• Lyttelton Library: Saturday 1 September to Saturday 8 September (All day)
• Shirley Library: Saturday 1 September to Friday 7 September (All day)
• Spreydon Library: Saturday 1 September (10am to 1pm) – Why not pop in and do some volunteer planting at Barrington playground too?
• South Library: Saturday 1 September and Sunday 2 September (All day)
• New Brighton: Saturday 1 September (10am to 3pm)
• Te Hāpua: Halswell Centre: Sunday 2 September to Sunday 9 September (All day)
• Matuku Takotako: Sumner Centre: Monday 3 September to Sunday 9 September (All day)
• Papanui Library: Friday 7 September and Saturday 8 September (All day)
• Linwood Library: Monday 10 September (All day)
• Akaroa Library: Monday 10 September (All day)
• Fendalton Library: Monday 10 September (1-3pm)
• Hornby Library: Monday 10 September (2-5pm)
• Ōrauwhata: Bishopdale Library and Community Centre: Thursday 13 September (All day)
• Parklands Library: Saturday 15 September (10am to 1pm)

Find out more

There are plenty more green-fingered resources at your libraries. Take a look at our page about gardens and gardening and explore the books, magazines, and eMagazines in our collection. Or try:

• Jo’s post about the joys of seed-saving
• Find titles about seed saving

House and garden: Picturing Canterbury

House and garden, 1950s. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 NZ. Kete Christchurch.

• See more Picturing Canterbury posts
• Browse our image collection
• Visit Kete Christchurch

It’s (pretty) easy being green

Why is a Writer’s Festival like a box of chocolates? Because there’s something inside for everyone.

Today I saw Tony Murrell, from Radio Live’s garden programme, host a lively session with The Gardener magazine editor Lynda Hallinan and sustainable gardening writer Janet Luke. All three are highly regarded gardening experts. They’re passionate about plants and their enthusiasm was infectious. I’ve never seen the microphone passed to so many people so quickly. It seemed everyone in the audience had a question to ask or a comment to add.

Tony Murrell has noticed a huge resurgence in interest in growing food at home in recent years. He laments the fact that many of today’s gardeners have lost the skills needed to grow veges successfully and have to spend money on re-education, tools, catalogues, fertilisers, etc. This results in expensive crop of perpetual spinach, lettuce and tomatoes which people get bored with and ‘turn back into camellia hedging’.

His panelists disagree. “It’s not all about money, Tony,” said Janet. “You are such an Aucklander!”

Linda said, “Don’t spend anything! Don’t build raised beds, don’t hire a garden designer, don’t buy a tonne of compost. Just buy a spade, dig a hole and plant things.” She believes gardening journalism has made it sound difficult and it’s not. “It’s natural. Plants grow and produce fruit because they are fulfilling their biological function. People think it’s harder than it is.”

Some sustainable gardening tips:

• Lasagne your compost heap
• Pile fallen leaves into a black polythene bag, tie it off, punch a few holes in it and store behind your garden shed for a year. It makes great compost.
• If your plants look great above the soil but have nothing beneath, your garden has too much nitrogen and not enough potassium.
• Blue flowers attract bees. Plant rosemary and borage to help pollination.
• Chop out the middle of your lemon tree and prune to a vase shape.
• Avoid systemetic sprays – they hurt bees.

If you’d like to know more, visit your library and check out Linda Hallinan’s Back to the land and Janet Luke’s Green Urban Living. They’ll give you plenty of helpful advice on how to get your garden doing what comes naturally.

Growing local: take a leaf from New Zealand books

I have a tiny, tiny garden, most of which is devoted to growing food. However, when we bought our small property, I was determined to have some native plantings as well. Now, nearly five years later, home-grown cabbage trees, pittosporum, kowhai and flaxes fill a corner too shady for vege, and we’ve squeezed a line of corokia in alongside the drive, thanks to the advice of Trees for Canterbury. I was struck (sorry for the pun) by how easy it is to grow many native plants, either from seed or from cuttings, and Growing gardens for free by New Zealand author Geoff Bryant is now my propagation bible.

A healthy population of insects now make their undisturbed homes in my microscopic little patch of native bush and last year, for the first time since I moved in, I saw waxeyes and fantails. (At first all I encountered in the initially lawn-filled garden were sparrows and blackbirds.) It’s such a little planting but I was amazed by how quickly even this had a noticeable effect on my garden’s ecology. Imagine if we all just planted a little corner of natives: we could create a green corridor for so many creatures across out garden city. If you’re keen and seeking like minds, there are many individuals and organisations working towards greening Christchurch/Otautahi, and you can find out about them on CINCH, our community information database.

The library has many good books on planting native plants in your garden – why not celebrate New Zealand book month by leafing (sorry again!) through a few?