Collecting Wild Plants For the Landscape

When a gardener asks me how to collect Plants in the wild I'm apt to say "Don't do it."

This answer is not prompted by any view of conservation, but one of dollars and cents and labor.

Just figure it out for yourself. For one, or a few Plants you drive 20 rough miles into the mountains (40 miles round trip at.75 cents per mile). Then there is the problem of lugging tools and wet sacks a half mile to the location of the Plants. Then comes the digging of the plant or Plants (why do the "selected" ones always grow among rocks?) After the Plants are burlapped comes the time to carry them (35 pounds or more) back the half mile to the car. After a hurried trip home the Plants are planted and watered. Somehow they always look much more scraggly when they are out in the open. What is the result? A 50-30% chance that the scraggly plant or Plants will survive.
I don't like the odds.

As for me, I'll go to a good nursery and pay 10 to 15 dollars for a well-shaped plant growing on a pruned and active root system. It's already dug, so all I do is take it home and plant it. The odds? About 95 to 5 that it will never show that it has been moved.

For all usual cases that is still my answer.

Those Rare Plants

There are unusual cases where Collecting is worth the trouble, however. If you find a special plant, one with unusually large or colorful bloom, better foliage or something of the sort, it may be worthwhile to bring it into your garden for further observation.

The only catch is that of the chance of losing the plant in transplanting it. With rare Plants you just can't afford. 50-50 odds.

Here is a trick for juggling the odds in your favor.

When you have selected your plant, decide how large a ball of earth you should lift with it to give it a good chance of coming through if it has a good root system. Don't forget that a wild plant almost always has so wide ranging a system of roots that you can't hope to collect more than a small fraction of it.

Now draw a circle of the selected diameter around the plant. Mark the quadrants of the circle. Now dig a trench around two opposing quadrants. Make the sides straight down to the full depth of the future ball, cutting all roots cleanly.

The trench need be only as wide as the digging tool.

Now fill the trench with a light, fluffy mixture of compost ("forest duff") and a little soil.

If you do this in October or November you can then relax until Mareh: Then return and repeat the operation for the other two quadrants.

At the next planting season you can ball this plant, working from the outer edge of the trench. Your plant will have formed a multitude of fine feeding roots in the light back-fill in the trench.

Under such circumstances you should hardly lose a plant in a hundred.

Did I hear you say "That's hard work?"

It certainly is. I'm sure you will agree that it is too much for any ordinary plant.

Of course, if your plant is as unusual as you think it is, it's worth it. If not, be lazy like I am. Just let your nurseryman do the work. It's cheaper really, and it surely saves a lot of spade work.

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