Episode 112: plant swaps
Plant swappers Fay Kenworthy (left) and Sarah Rousseau (right) plus plant swap dog Tea met me for a chat about the dynamics of plant swaps. Photograph: Kash Prashad.
Transcript
Episode 112
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Jane: On The Ledge Podcast is back, episode 112, and I am your host Jane Perrone, it rhymes with Stallone. In this week's show, we're talking about plant swaps. There's absolutely nothing better than getting a room of planty people together, to exchange precious pots full of lovely leaves and that's what this show is all about. I'm talking to Fay Kenworthy and Sarah Rousseau, the co-founders of Plant Swap UK, which is based in Sheffield about how they set up their plant swap and how it has changed their lives. I'm dealing with a Q&A concerning a mystery peperomia. If you're in Montreal, prick up your ears because this concerns you!
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Jane: A shout out this week to Zella, I'm not sure how to pronounce your name, welcome to our merry band of Patreons. You can now officially call yourself a ledge-end. Patreons unlock extra, exclusive content, ad-free versions of the show and more, including, this Christmas, a special posted Christmas greeting, so if you do happen to be a Patreon please make sure that your postal address is up to date in Patreon, otherwise I won't be able to send you this lovely thing. I'll put a link in the show notes to show you how to do that. And it's not too late to get on board, so you can get that special exclusive Christmas greeting which has involved commissioning an illustrator, so it's going to be a good one folks. You've still got time to get that Christmas greeting, you've just need to sign up to Patreon before November 8th and that way you will get your personal handwritten card. I'm in the middle of revamping my Patreon and I'd love to hear from you, whether you're a current Patreon, a former Patreon, or somebody who has never given it a try. I'd love to know what you'd like to get out of it, what I could add, what could be changed and generally what you think of the whole idea. So drop me a line to
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Jane: Lots of listeners have been in touch over the last few months asking for an episode about plant swaps and I couldn't resist taking up that challenge because plant swaps are fab. For a start, you get to be in a room full of people who share the same passion as you, you get to offload a few extra plants that you haven't got room for any more and you get that warm fuzzy feeling from knowing that somebody else will soon be enjoying the delights of the particular plant that you've brought. As we all know, plant people are notoriously generous, so plant swaps are also great places to pick up new additions to your collection without having to spend a penny. But how do they work? How do you find one? Or what about if you want to set one up? I've dabbled very slightly in the world of plant swaps over the years, but I haven't a clue as to how set up a really good, slick operation that works well for everybody. So I turned to Fay Kenworthy and Sarah Rousseau who organise plant swaps in Sheffield, and further afield in the UK, and are past masters at making these events work. They were so lovely and as you'll hear we had lots of fun and we also covered lots of great ground on this subject too. I'll let them introduce themselves.
Fay: I'm Fay, I'm one of the co-founders of Sheffield Plant Swap and Sarah and I, who is the other co-conspirator in this exercise...
Sarah: Hello.
Jane: Co-conspirator sounds good.
Sarah: I'm Sarah. I'm the other co-founder of Sheffield Plant Swap and Fay and I have known each other for about fifteen years, but we have lots of overlapping parts of our lives which is really weird. We both have the same degree but we weren't in the same year.
Fay: We knew of, but we didn't know each other at university.
Sarah: We both studied archaeology at university and I was two years above Fay and then we met again, weirdly, playing roller derby.
Jane: Okay, well that is a Venn diagram that's very interesting.
Fay: Unique, The roller derby is a critical point in this story though, because it was roller derby that actually started off the plant swap because we have a social group of roller derby, current and past roller derby, in Sheffield.
Sarah: Retired, like me.
Jane: It's quite a violent and lively sport I understand?
Fay: Yes, lively.
Jane: Violent is probably the wrong word.
Sarah: Energetic, full-contact. I retired.
Fay: A lot of roller derby cross over in this Venn diagram and being interested in plants as well. Conversations started on a Facebook thread, so: "Has anyone got this plant that we can swap?" Sarah had some, then I had some and it was getting very complicated working out lots of cross swaps amongst multiple people, so I was like should we get everyone together at somebody's house? Then it was more people than we could fit into Sarah's house and it turned into: "Well, can we find somewhere else to host us?" So we did!
Jane: Here we are. Everyone thinks a plant swap is, you bring some plants and then you take away some plants. There's a lot more to it than that I imagine?
Sarah: There is, although that is...
Jane: That is the essence of it.
Sarah: One of our plant swaps, yes, definitely, what we are really keen to do is to make sure that nobody feels they need to bring something and everybody feels like they can go away with something as well. Part of the point of plant swap, for us, is to encourage people to have house plants, so if people are coming and they haven't got anything to swap that's absolutely fine with us, there's always plenty. But there's a lot of background, yes, that goes into planning it.
Jane: Are you finding that this is something that's being adopted in other places? Are you finding other cities? How are you doing this? We want to try this where we are?
Sarah: We have had enquiries, I had an enquiry from Austin, Texas, and I sent a long email to a guy that wants to do it in Texas, I haven't heard from him actually, I must contact him. There are plant swaps around but they tend to be quite different to us.
Fay: Yes, so there tends to be a couple of different models that people can use, so I am aware of other plant swaps that are starting up and happening, but there's some choices you make quite early on about how you want your plant swap to run and what your purposes and aims are. It may be for people who are quite a long way down their house plant journey, they're very interested in swapping on a transactional basis, one-to-one, particular specimens that they've been looking out for. We were thinking about people who were far earlier in their house plant journey and wanting to encourage people to start collecting house plants or start interacting with nature and having some plants. So the way that it falls for us, is that rather than having transactional, one-for-one or a token system, actually, what we say to people is please bring what you can, take what you like, and then if you can make a donation that you feel is appropriate and if you've not brought anything, maybe donate a little bit more, then that evens it out in the wider scheme of things and hopefully over time people who have taken away one plant, after all that grows, matures, it might have some babies and then you bring that back to another plant swap, thanking: "Somebody gave me this, and now I'm passing on that plant love."
Sarah: I do think we keep it fair, that's quite important, some people won't swap at the actual swaps and they use our Facebook group for swapping individually and they'll meet up, and a lot of people have met through that. What we tend to do at the swaps is we will say, we only do it for an hour, which seems like a really short space of time, but it means everybody is there at the same time, which is lovely because they all get to meet, everybody puts their plants on the table and they don't swap until we say they can. It sounds really draconian.
Jane: No, I can imagine.
Sarah: No, but it means that nobody is just grabbing. You get a chance to have a look.
Jane: I'd be that person going: "Oh my god!" Tossing aside elderly ladies and small children to get that special plant. That sounds very, very sensible. People get excited about plants!
Sarah: They do, you can see people sidling up to a plant and standing next to it ready for when I say: "Okay, you can swap."
Jane: That would be me, I'd be terrible!
Jane: I just wanted to step in here and say I promise I will be well behaved if you ever see me at a plant swap, okay? I will restrain myself against all temptations and be a very good plant swapper, so don't bar me from your plant swap please. Anyway, on with the interview.
Jame: Is there a typical plant that people bring along, is it the common stuff, is it the spider plant? This trough of lovely spider plants?
Sarah: So the trough you see before you is what we call one of our plant swap creches. This is what happens, after a plant swap, we get plants left over, and they come home with us. Fay will take some and they live outside at Fay's or occasionally inside. I will take ones that I can put in this trough, basically. So we haven't had a swap for three months. So I've got a lot of spider plants from the last swap, as you can see they quite like being there, so they're all going to the swap, or most of them will be going back to the swap next week.
Jane: Well, I guess that's the thing, if you've got somewhere. What are you going to do with them otherwise? You can't contemplate ...
Fay: We go through several stages of bargaining first. There is an end stage, where everybody has been a bit too polite and they've taken their fair share, we then say: "No, please, just take anything now, don't feel like you're being greedy, because all these plants will come home with us, so take whatever you like!"
Sarah: Nothing gets thrown away. Everything either gets given away or brought back with us.
Fay: We do have some very kind people who foster plants for us.
Sarah: Yes, we do have some, our friend Lisa, she has an allotment. She's brilliant. She will take stuff, the ones that will survive on the allotment, she will take that.
Fay: Yes, because we have garden plants and house plants. We started off primarily as a house plant swap but then it seemed draconian to say: "No, you can't bring anything that lives outdoors," so now we have half and half and we have tables for house plants and tables for garden plants.
Jane: Is plant swapping, I hate to say the word Brexit but I'm going to say it, I've been thinking about this, about people stockpiling things and how it's going to affect the house plant industry. I'm wondering it's actually quite subversive this whole plant swap thing in that there are rare aroids going for hundreds of pounds and things. There's something rather nice about the fact that there's no financial transactions going on here, but is that something that matters to you, the fact that it's just a totally different way of growing your...?
Sarah: Yes, absolutely, we started this because we want plants to be accessible to everybody and we often have Monstera that comes to the swap and people will pay £30-£40 for one tiny Monstera. So being able to get one at a swap means they can have the plant they want. Having said that, all of us, we all know that a lot of people who come to plant swap, also purchase plants.
Fay: I wouldn't say, it's not an alternative to buying plants but it supports and encourages people around it, and particularly about making it accessible and bringing new people in who maybe haven't had plants before. The lovely thing is you don't just get a plant, there's actually a Facebook group where people share information and tips and people say: "Oh, I got this plant at the plant swap but how do I look after it?"
Sarah: Or "What is it?" quite often. Your listeners can't see this, but how many plants are in this room? We started this two years ago and the only house plant in my house was the peace lily.
Jane: So, yes, you've upped your game!
Sarah: I could frequently be heard telling people that I had the black fingers of death when it came to plants, so you can see I've moved on a little.
Jane: I guess that's the great thing about the plant swap is that you can get a plant which you can learn all about through the course of the Facebook group and you can look up advice in so many different ways, books, internet and so on, and you're going to learn as you go. It may take you in a different direction than you possibly expected.
Sarah: The nice thing about plant swap is, we do them every two months, if I've had a plant that doesn't like me, or my house, which does happen, I know that in a couple of weeks' time, I can take it back to plant swap and somebody else will very willingly take it. Even if I've done my darnedest to kill it, which sometimes I do, sometimes I just don't get on with a plant or it doesn't like the house or I can't find the right place in the house for it. I know I can take it to plant swap and somebody else will love it and that's what's so great about it.
Fay: I think that works for a lot of people really, the idea that sometimes things just don't work out, that you've not got the right place for it, you can take it to plant swap and go away with another plant and have a go at that. You don't have to be tied into this doomed relationship with a finicky plant that's never going to be happy, so I've made my peace that ferns will never live in my house.
Jane: I have had many, many ferns over the years, many have been given away, many have been composted because, likewise, they're not my spirit plant.
Fay: The only place they would live would be my bathroom, my bathroom has no windows, so it's a functional aspect, there's just no way it's going to happen. I did take a fern to plant swap labelled only as "Sad fern".
Sarah: We have a photograph of that actually.
Jane: Is there a thing where people want a fixer upper plant: "Yes, I want a challenge and I will take this stick on and turn it into something?"
Sarah: I was just about to say, we do have quite a few people who will, with joy, take away something that is on its last legs. Fay has done it for me recently, I inherited a jade plant that was not doing well and then I proceeded to forget about it because it was in a room I don't go in. It was not well and it went to live at Fay's for a little while and it's come back and it's thriving. So there are always people who will take stuff who have the time to do it, which I don't always.
Jane: How has the swap size developed? It obviously has grown. Has it gone exponential? Have you created this monster now?
Sarah: We have created a monster.
Fay: A lovely monster.
Sarah: The first swap which was November 2017, we started this in November, in the outdoors, we must have been mad. I think we got about 20 to 30 people and we weren't expecting that and now we're upwards of 60. We can't count them. We haven't found a method that works for counting people.
Fay: We don't have a clear in and out and people are circulating. Definitely more than 60 and there's about 1,000 members in the Sheffield Plant Swap Facebook group. There's a lot of people who haven't been to a plant swap yet but just swap plants on the Facebook group too. I love the way it operates both in the digital world and the real world and between the two of them it makes face-to-face connections but then also this ongoing and daily chit-chat and conversation that's happening on the Facebook group.
Sarah: We don't allow selling on the Facebook group, it's swapping only, we don't allow adverts for selling and that kind of thing, because we want the Facebook group to be very much like the swaps itself. We've got a website now which Fay has built, and I say this because Fay has done a marvellous job of building this website completely from scratch and we use that to give a little more in-depth knowledge about some of the plants because people keep asking us and it's a good excuse for me because I used to be a photographer, so I spend a lot of time taking photographs of plants but I also take photos of all the people that come to the swaps as well, so it's quite nice to share the photos on there.
Fay: I love our people and plants photos. At every swap we have a people and plants gallery of people who've arrived with their plants when they go and I love those.
Sarah: I love taking them.
Fay: They're absolutely brilliant.
Jane: That is a great little actual snapshot of what's going on in your swaps.
Sarah: We encourage people to post photos of the plants they've taken when they've matured a bit, or where they've put them in their home, we encourage them to put that on the Facebook group.
Fay: It's really nice if you've donated a plant as well and you see it popping up in somebody else's home and you think: "Oh, that's where it's gone, that's really nice."
Jane: Are there any potential pitfalls, what do you do if someone turns up with a Mealybug infested cactus. Are there any things where you think: "Oh gosh, this is a tricky one to handle," or is it always smooth sailing.
Fay: We just say no thank you to anything that's diseased.
Sarah: We've never had that happen to my knowledge. We have had somebody who said they had took something that turned out to have issues. I think we can't control that and we don't check every plant that goes through, because like I said it's an hour, when everybody's there, and it's only an hour, it's hard to keep track of everything, so we're not watching the plants as such.
Fay: The pitfalls, for us personally, has been just having lots and lots of plants and going home with them.
Jane: That's not a pitfall, it's a massive bonus.
Sarah: Our partners might call it a pitfall.
Fay: It facilitates plant hoarding.
Jane: Yes, and plant hoarders of the world.
Sarah: We've had one occasion where somebody did sweep their arm across the table and take everything that they could take their hands on. Fay's a lot more diplomatic than me and I got Fay to say something.
Jane: That's the thing, isn't it? As people see how the thing works, hopefully they're mirroring the good behaviour they're already seeing.
Sarah: Yes and generally that is actually as it is.
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Jane: Fay and Sarah were just about as much fun as they sounded and we'll be back with them in a little bit but now it's time for this week's Q&A. I was delighted to get a particularly gnarly plant identification question this week from Charlotte who was enjoying the peperomia episode when she decided to drop me an email about a peperomia that she described as: "The hunt for a unicorn peperomia," and the story goes something like this. Charlotte was in Montreal, not her home city, she was visiting various plant shops and boutiques and, according to her, eating her weight in food, sounds good to me, and she came across a tiny plant sitting on the ledge - see what she did there? - in a cafe window. She writes: "At first look, I brushed it off as a baby Pilea peperomioides, but as my coffee took longer and longer to arrive, I realised this was no ordinary money plant at all. Yes, the tops of the leaves look like saucers or UFOs but the underside did not stem from a mother branch and the stems were red!!!!! In my pre-coffee haze, I left the cafe figuring that I would easily be able to find this plant online to identify it. This was certainly no exotic plant cafe, after all surely this was a readily available plant? No, Jane, this is no common house plant! Picture a watermelon peperomia with this beautiful red stem popping up from beneath the soil surface only, instead of the signature striped leaves, picture a beautiful flat green leaf. The best I can find is the picture I've attached below called the Peperomia Scutellifolia, but in all the internet this is the only picture I can find. So surely this innocuous little cafe in Montreal is not housing the one and only unicorn of peperomias perched on a windowsill and forgotten about?"
So this was like catnip to me, obviously! I had to help and I did a bit of searching and my best guess was either that this plant was Peperomia monticola which is a geophytic peperomia that means it's a Cordisaform plant which has got very similar sounding qualities, it's got red stems and those UFO-type round leaves. The other plant that occurred to me was Crassula umbella, which is a rare cap crassula also known as wine cups that has round leaves. So these were the suggestions that I put to Charlotte and the conclusion, so far, is that she thinks it's Peperomia monticola. I don't think this is a plant that's particularly easy to get hold of. So if anyone knows of where Charlotte might be able to get a Peperomia monticola in Canada then please do shout out and let me know because Charlotte's very excited about the idea of getting her hands on one of these plants. If anyone is listening in Montreal, let me know and if you want to go on a special On The Ledge mission to this cafe and try to take a picture of this plant then I will hook you up with the correct information. I love these kind of challenges. So if you've got a mystery plant, please drop me a line, there's nothing I like better than a bit of botanical sleuthing.
If you've got a question for On The Ledge, the usual rules apply, drop me a line to
Jane: Is it encouraging people to propagate plants specifically for the swap?
Fay: Definitely.
Sarah: Definitely. We love it because people will put stuff on Facebook, this is what I'm bringing to the next swap and it will be this little nursery of lots of different babies of things which is brilliant, it's really good.
Fay: I love propagation.
Sarah: I have a slight problem, I don't want to harm any of my babies. I had Fay in here this week and I've been saying to her: "What can I split?" I can't bring myself to do it, I let her take a leaf off that this week and that was really hard.
Jane: That's a beautiful peperomia, I should be able to identify it having just been to the national collection, but I can't.
Fay: It's a watermelon one, I can't remember the name, but they're very beautiful. I was like Sarah can I take a leaf please.
Sarah: I couldn't watch while she did it, but I let her do it.
Jane: What I find when people come to my house, I have quite a few training plants like a string of hearts, a string of beads, or hoya linearis, I could have given away a million cuttings of that. I'm like: "I'm actually not going to give away anymore at the minute because I can't get it to grow."
Sarah: String of anything is really, really sought after at swaps and we don't get them that often. So pearls, dolphins, beads...
Fay: Hearts.
Jane: Bananas.
Sarah: Anything, but they don't appear very often because people just don't want to split them up, I don't think.
Jane: I just recently purchased on eBay, it wasn't that bad, it was about £10, a cutting of the variegated string of beads, or string of pearls, Curio rowleyanus 'Variegata' which is very desirable, I have to say. Oh my gosh, it's so gorgeous. It's one plant that really does thrive in my house, so once it gets big I will be taking cuttings, because for me, that's part of the joy, having this plant that is really desirable and being able to go: "There you go, you can have some of that," because that's what people have done to me.
Sarah: For me, I don't have the knowledge to do it and keep them both alive, that's my concern. The thing that I'm most after is a variegated monstera, I think that is on the top of my list for wanting.
Fay: I did get a variegated monstera cutting off eBay, so far it's not actually looking very variegated.
Jane: That's the trouble.
Fay: The stem is variegated so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that it was from a variegated parent, because when it arrived the stem had these wonderful swirls on it, so far the two leaves that have popped out have been disappointingly solid green.
Sarah: So what Fay has to tell you is how many monstera there are in her house.
Jane: Have you got more than me?
Sarah: She counted them recently.
Jane: A dozen?
Fay: No, in the 20s.
Jane: All of deliciosa?
Fay: There's a bit of a story behind it.
Jane: So a forest?
Sarah: It is a forest!
Fay: I live in a tiny terrace which is two up, two down, and in my kitchen I have a monstera it sits on the washing machine and it goes to the roof. It was a £5 eBay purchase and when it came it was just this tangled mess of everything and I was really brave and I took a pair of scissors and I pruned it hard. I was like: "It's a pity to get rid of these," I wondered if I can propagate it, and I was like: "Oh, yes, I can propagate it, okay, let's give it a go," and I thought some of them would take, and they all took!
Jane: You're a victim of your own success.
Fay: I've got about 24, so they're at various stages, there were some quite mature leaves that I took several at a time and with air roots and stuff and there were other bits that were short sections of stem. So then I had little tiny baby plants and then the other ones are mid-sized monsteras and there's this huge monstera that sits in my kitchen and dominates the space.
Jane: Will any of them be going to this plant swap?
Fay: Yes, I'm sure, part of the bargain is some of them go to plant swaps.
Jane: You have got more than me, that's definitely true. I've said on the show several times, I'm incredibly naughty because I do have three variegated monsteras which is ludicrous.
Sarah: But they're so lovely.
Jane: One was given to me and two I bought as tiny seedlings, but it was a very exciting moment, because one of them has just had its first fenestrated leaf that has got a hole surrounded by... that's an exciting moment. My plan is eventually to break up one of those plants for cuttings for listeners and do some kind of lottery, because again, I want to spread the joy. I could sell one of them on eBay or sell one, but that wouldn't be very much fun, I want to make it fun. So, eventually, they're getting bigger by the day now and something's going to have to happen.
Sarah: That started as a leaf, my stepdaughter gave me that for my birthday, and that started as a leaf. When that started with the holes and things I was very excited.
Jane: What amazes me sometimes, people have the assumption is as the leaf grows, it will develop more holes whereas the fascination is that it comes fully formed, it's just got to unfurl and expand which I think is just so interesting especially with the variegated form because you can see the different colour coming through. I guess fashions will change and perhaps we'll be going on to plain green leaves and appreciating something else.
Fay: There are definitely some less popular plants which could do with some more love than they currently get.
Sarah: We've been getting a lot of, I'm not very good on names I have to admit, pothos? There's been quite a few of those recently, haven't there? You're partially responsible for those because you bought some and then brought them to the plant swap.
Fay: Guilty as charged.
Sarah: There are a lot of people who come to the swap who rescue plants from shops where they've got them and they're not looking very well and they might be on offer or might be thrown away. I rescued a massive cactus out of a skip from down the road and that went to plant swap. It was like this, it was a good six inches across.
Jane: I have heard people say: "I've found this on the curb," and I'm thinking is like that fallen off the back of a lorry, or did you actually find... well I suppose it happens, people are moving out of an apartment and they don't have room for a plant and it just goes outside.
Sarah: And somebody will pick it up, but this was actually thrown into a skip and I just went in and got it.
Jane: I love that, skip diving for plants, that's a great thing!
Fay: We've created a beast that we now feel we need to feed and take all the plants to, but that's why I love propagating plants as well, because it does make it, like you were saying, much more accessible and you can spread the plant love to other people and say: "Would you like a cutting of this or a cutting of that?"
Sarah: We've also discovered that some of our members are specialists in their own rights, some of them have favourites and they know so much about their chosen plant and it's wonderful to have them at the swap because they will impart that knowledge to others, which is just brilliant.
Fay: Yes, in fact, we didn't know a lot about plants when we started plant swap.
Sarah: I still don't think I do.
Fay: But having members that are incredibly knowledgeable means that at a plant swap, it's just as likely to be a member who is sharing knowledge as Sarah or I because we haven't brought the plant, we don't necessarily know its history or what it likes, whereas somebody who has brought the plant, they'll see someone pick it up and they'll go: "I brought this one, it really likes these conditions or make sure you only water it once a week." It's fantastic because you do get those conversations where people share their knowledge as well as sharing the plant.
Jane: Would you encourage anyone thinking about setting up a plant swap to just go for it, to give it a try and see how it works? Has this labour of love been worthwhile?
Fay: We were talking about this before you arrived, find a co-conspirator, find somebody else...
Sarah: Don't do it on your own.
Fay: ... who is enthusiastic and wants to do it because it makes it so much easier when there's two of you behind a project and you gee each other up.
Sarah: It takes up a lot of our time, I work part-time and I would say one day a week I would spend dealing with plant swap stuff. Because we don't just have one venue, we have two venues now and we're looking at trying to find a third venue across the city because people tend to travel by public transport and then you have to think about is your venue accessible, we won't use a venue that isn't disabled accessible, and there's loads of things to think about and talk to people about. Of course, if you're having a plant swap, you have to advertise it.
Jane: I'm sure with events like those, when I've organised events, you'll get half a dozen people after the event who will say: "Oh, I wish I'd heard..." and you're thinking: "I did so much advertising, how can you have not seen my adverts?" I don't know how much more you can do.
Sarah: Phoning them up personally.
Jane: Exactly, but there is an enormous amount of organisation that goes into it, more power to your elbows for organising it. You have donations, as you were saying, presumably you'll plough that into making it bigger and better?
Sarah: We are looking at moving it out of Sheffield and perhaps going to other places as well and holding events in other places too because we want to share it. We really enjoy it.
Fay: We always come back after every plant swap on a bit of a high.
Sarah: We do, and want to lie in a darkened room for half an hour.
Fay: I just love talking to people and meeting people. The really nice thing is you get to meet people and all share the same passion.
Jane: Do you discover that there's somebody who lives very close to you who you suddenly realise: "Oh my gosh, I've got this amazing resource and I didn't know you existed."
Fay: So many connections.
Sarah: We're about to be invaded by dogs.
Jane: At this point in the interview, Sarah's dogs came back from their walk and the interview descended into a chat about dogs. So let's fast forward to the point where we get back into house plants.
Jane: Is there anything else about plant swaps that we've neglected to say, or you wanted to share, or important things or insights?
Fay: You were touching on what would you do if you were setting up a plant swap or how would you do it? I want to say, first off, we've got a website where we talk about how we run plant swaps, so that people coming along to plant swap know what to expect and know how it'll run. That's quite a useful template if you're thinking of setting up a plant swap to go and have a look at. Equally, there are other ways of running plant swaps, there's not one size fits all, so think about what you want to accomplish out of it. We always had a really clear vision that this was about building community of plant lovers, encouraging people to start on their house plant journey. You might have a very different perspective, so in those circumstances there are other swap models, maybe you have tables and people swap directly, one plant for another plant. There is a plant swap that we went to visit where they allocated tokens and you got a certain number of tokens for bringing a certain size plant and then you could spend those tokens swapping for other plants. But the downside we saw of all of those models is they involve more organisation and more knowledge and to make fair. It just seemed more organisation and complicated whereas, at its purest sense, this is quite simple and really simple and easy to understand. It fitted very closely with what we wanted a plant swap to do.
Sarah: We're happy to talk to people about setting up a plant swap, we have done that.
Fay: We're about to have our 12th, we have seasoned hands now.
Sarah: We've been doing this a while now.
Jane: You are seasoned hands! Do you think that this is something that is going to grow, do you think there's an appetite for it?
Fay: I hope so, I really do, I think with more and more people realising that getting some nature back in your life brings all sorts of positive benefits from just beautifying your space to mental health to all sorts of reasons, it's a really positive thing to encourage, and making that as successful as possible so you don't have to buy the most stupidly expensive desirable plant, is a really great way of doing that.
Jane: That's a great point to end on, thank you very much Sarah and Fay.
Fay: Thank you.
Sarah: Thank you.
[music]
Jane: I hope that's inspired you to think about setting up, attending or supporting a plant swap near you. You'll find Sarah and Fay's website at plantswap.uk and I'll include that and lots of other links and pictures from our chat in the show notes at janeperrone.com and if you're in travelling distance of Sheffield in the UK, then Plant Swap 13, is where you should be heading on November 17th at 16:00. This is Sarah and Fay's 13th plant swap, all the details of that are on their website plantswap.uk and you are guaranteed a warm welcome.
One final update, in episode 109 we had a little mention for the nitrogen fixing qualities of Oxalis Triangluaris but I've heard back from a couple of botanists who've told me that there's no evidence that Oxalis Triangluaris is a nitrogen fixing plant and Matt Candeias of In Defence of Plants, always a useful reference for these kind of questions, who tells me: "Oxalis do not form the nodules or any other structures that are requisite for an n-fixing lifestyle, not to say it's impossible but the literature is not turning up anything that would suggest Oxalis Triangularis is a special case." It's not a big problem in that Oxalis Triangularis is still a fantastic plant and one well worth growing, but I just wanted clear up any confusion and it's great to have such an expert audience on hand to make sure that we get things right here at On The Ledge, which is always the aim.
[music]
Jane: That's all for this week, I will be back in seven days for more chlorophyll-based advice and entertainment, bye!
[music]
Jane: The music in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, An Instrument the Boy Called Happy Day, Gokarna by Samuel Corwin, Fire Tree by Axeltree and Overthrown by Josh Woodward. All these tracks are licensed under Creative Commons. See my show notes at www.janeperrone.com for details.
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Plant swaps are a great way to connect with likeminded planty people, offload surplus plants and get your hands on some great new specimens for your collection. I visited two seasoned plant swappers in Sheffield to find out how it’s done - and I also answer a question about a mystery Peperomia.
This week’s guests
Fay Kenworthy and Sarah Rousseau are the co-founders of the hugely successful Sheffield PlantSwap. Since their first event in November 2017 when they welcomed 20 to 30 people, Fay and Sarah’s swaps have gone from strength to strength. Since this episode was recorded last month, they saw around 170 people attend their latest swap, and their Facebook group now has 1,000+ members.
Plantswap.uk are holding their next swap on November 24 2019 in Sheffield - details here. You can see the galleries of photos of plant swappers here, and contact Fay and Sarah here: they are happy to dispense advice to anyone wanting to set up their own swap! And if you’ve got an upcoming swap you’d like to publicise on On The Ledge, do let me know - I’d be happy to give it a plug!
Fancy setting up your own plant swap? Here are some tips…
A clear set of plant swap rules will help your event to run smoothly. Photograph: Sarah Rouseeau/plantswap.uk.
Decide early on what model you want to use: will it be a free-for-all, a one-plant-for-one-plant approach, or a token-based system? Sarah and Fay find the free-for-all approach works well and is the least work, but bear in mind you may have to keep an eye out for the odd person who takes more than their fair share.
Find a co-conspirator to organise the event together: it’s great to be able to bounce ideas off each other and share the work!
Make sure your swap is accessible to all: including issues such as choosing a venue that’s easy for wheelchairs and children’s buggies to move around, publicising your event in a wide range of ways from physical posters to Facebook, and making sure that people who don’t have plants to swap still feel welcome.
Think about how you’ll draw people in: here in the UK, tea and cake usually seems to work! Maybe you could run a workshop before or after the swap, or run the event in a venue where there’s lots of passing foot traffic to draw people in.
Work out in advance what you are going to do with any plants left at the end.
How to be a good plant swapper
Make sure you bring healthy plants that are labelled as accurately as you can, follow the rules of the swap and say thankyou to the organisers by helping out with publicity for the next swap or offering a cash donation if that’s appropriate. Check out Plantswap.uk’s extensive info page for more on how their plant swaps work and how to get the best out of them.
How to find a plant swap near you
Checking out social media using the hastag #plantswap is a great way to start. If you are in the US, check the events listing on plantswap.org. If you can’t make it to a swap in person, there are loads of swaps online, including the website houseplantswap.com, and remember you can swap plants on the podcast’s Facebook group, Houseplant Fans of On The Ledge.
Question of the week
Charlotte got in touch to ask for help solving a mystery Peperomia question: after spotting what she assumed was a Pilea peperomioides in a Montreal cafe, she realised the plant was actually some kind of Peperomia with saucer-like leaves and red stems. I made a stab that the plant was either P. monticola or Crassula umbella, and Charlotte concluded it was the former. If you know where to get hold of this plant, or you live in Montreal and want to go on a mission to the cafe to see if this plant is still there, let me know!
Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue!
HOW TO SUPPORT ON THE LEDGE
Contributions from On The Ledge listeners help to pay for all the things that have made the show possible over the last few years: equipment, travel expenses, editing, admin support and transcription.
Want to make a one-off donation? You can do that through my ko-fi.com page, or via Paypal.
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CREDITS
Thanks to Kash Prashad for being my ‘right-hand woman’ on this trip. This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, An Instrument the Boy Called Happy Day Gorkana by Samuel Corwin, Fire Tree by Axeltree and Overthrown by Josh Woodward. All tracks licensed under Creative Commons. Logo design by Jacqueline Colley.