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Use your thinned-out plants and harvested seeds to reach out to your neighbors and share the beauty of flowers.

First, determine what you have in your garden that can be shared with your neighbors. If you aren’t certain how or when to thin or collect clippings or seeds, use online or library resources to find the best times and ways to divide or collect from your particular plants.

Print out a list of the available plants and seeds you’d like to share. Include your name and contact information and when which items will be available. When you you’re your list, print it out on an index card or half-page card stock, using color ink and including clip art or pictures of your favorite flowers. You may choose to have it laminated.

Distribute this information to neighbors – both those with and without gardens. Explain what you’d like to do, and ask if they have plants they would like to share with you or other neighbors. Offer to help them make or distribute their list if they don’t think they’ll have the time.

If you have seeds available at the time of your list distribution, consider sealing and labeling them in envelopes and taking them to each door. Open the conversation by offering an envelope of seeds, and then explain your plan to share among the neighborhood gardeners.

Instant Intentions

If you don’t have the plants to share but would like to use this idea to connect with neighbors, go to the gardeners in your neighborhood who obviously have a green thumb, and let them know you’d like to start a garden. Ask them for any advice about gardening in your area, and ask if they’re willing to share any clippings or thinned plants. As time passes and your new garden produces, take a few blossoms to those who helped you.

-          From the book, Field Guide to Neighborhood Outreach by Group Publishing, 2007.

Note: Another way to extend this idea would be to assist your neighbors with their tough landscaping jobs this spring. You could offer to help them dig holes for any large shrubs or trees they want to plan (Call Digger’s Hotline first!). For some of your neighbors, spring gardening may be especially difficult due to a recent surgery, illness, or pregnancy – let them know you’d be willing to help them with weed-pulling, lawn-mowing, or other tasks. Or, accompany your neighbor to the garden store and lug the heavy stuff, such as top soil and potted bushes, around the store and load it into and out of their car.  – Lisa Jaeger, Director of Assimilation and Deployment