The prevalence of nurseries and big box retailers today makes it rather easy to find any manner of plant life to add to one’s garden or yard landscape, but in the early days of the South, diversifying your garden typically involved acquiring seeds or cuttings from friends and neighbors. This tradition of using pass-along plants remains an important aspect of southern gardening heritage. And as News-Press storyteller Amy Bennett Williams tells us in this week’s essay, it can turn each item in one’s garden into a touchstone connecting us with the people and places of Southwest Florida’s past.
Pass-Along Plants
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