The house-plant lady is joining the garden-plant lady to host the area’s biggest and best yet plant swap.
Emily Holland is joining longtime plant swap organizer Holly Kozelsky to host an exchange on Saturday, Oct. 17, from 10-11 a.m., at the MHC Heritage Museum, 1 E. Main St., Martinsville. There is no charge to participate.
Expand your garden and/or houseplant collection without spending a dime; find new homes for your divisions and cuttings; and share and get advice. This exchange is for plant lovers to trade seeds, plants, cuttings, divisions, bulbs, tubers, potted plants, even tools, fertilizer, pots, etc., with each other.
Bring what you have; it would be great, but not necessary, if you could bring labels or written instructions (in multiple copies) to help those who receive your plants. Trade freely with other gardeners.
If you are new to gardening or houseplants, don’t worry. There will be plenty of extra plants for you to help you get started. There’s nothing gardeners love better than to share plants and advice.
This event will be held rain or shine in the courtyard (under the portico if raining) of the MHC Heritage Museum. The organizers thank the MHC Historical Society for allowing the event to be held there. The museum will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. that day. There will be safe places for you to stash your plants after the swap so that you may tour the museum.
“If there is one thing I know how to do, it is grow,” Holland said, “not always gracefully and not always according to plan, but somehow, through every season, I’ve kept them coming. Maybe that’s part of why I’ve always loved plants.”
Holland, who works at Patrick & Henry Community College, is a mother of three, an ethical dog breeder, a certified fitness instructor and a yogi. She has dreams of someday owning a little farm and garden of her own.
She said her love for plants started in 2007 when she worked at the Lowe’s garden center “and grew into a full-blown passion during COVID, when I discovered the world of rare plants. I began attending auctions, importing, and collecting, and at one point my collection topped 250 houseplants, which meant I was less a plant owner and more their live-in staff.
“I don’t have quite that many today, but the love never left. Plants are still one of my favorite reminders that growth takes patience, the right environment, and sometimes a little repotting. Whether it’s people, plants, animals, movement, or the life I’m continuing to build, nurturing growth seems to be a common thread in just about everything I do.”
Kozelsky is the executive director of the MHC Heritage Museum and a former editor and features editor of the Martinsville Bulletin.
She was certified as a Virginia Master Gardener in 2010, and this summer she was named a Harrison Fellow of the Historic Landscape Institute at Monticello through the University of Virginia.
She hosted a plant swap twice a year for 18 years and only stopped last year when she was too busy with other things. “Having Emily join me in this makes it all fun again,” she said, “so now the plant swap is back, this time, with two of us!”
She noted that October is the best time of year to plant perennials. Fall planting gives plants time to grow their roots so that they can better survive the rigors of hot summer weather.
She and her daughter, Mary, a senior at Magna Vista High School, live in a restored old farmhouse in Leatherwood, surrounded by both flower and vegetable gardens. Each year she turns more and more of her property over to flower beds. The latest is of all types of native plants.
“Native plants are more than just plants,” she said. “They are wonderfully alive with butterflies and pollinators, which make them just magical to have in the landscape. Plus, having them helps bring back a little of the nature that humanity has destroyed so much.
“Henry County woods and fields have been taken over by all sorts of invasive species which crowd out native plants and rob the area of the food birds, insects and other creatures need to survive. Planting over the yard with native plants is a small step in the right direction.”
Included in her collection of native plants are about two dozen young leatherwood shrubs, about half on her property, and the other half behind the museum. Leatherwood (Dirca palustris) used to be an important, useful plant for Native Americans and settlers; its branches are pliable and were used like rope or leather straps. The once abundant plant now cannot be found locally, and it also is nearly impossible to find commercially.
Her other latest interest is water gardening. Her first mini pond is about 5 by 2 1/1 feet, and she’s been so delighted by the plants and wildlife in and around it that she is putting in a pond that’s about 15 feet across.
Kozelsky said she holds the plant swap because plants multiply and send out seeds so freely that gardeners should have a place to share easily with each other. Holland said she is interested in the plant swap as a way not only to share plants but also to meet people with the same interest.
