As members of the GardenWeb Tennessee Gardening Forum, we will be hosting our 9th Biannual Middle Tennessee Plant Swap on May 20th. There will be over 100 gardeners to attend from all over the state of Tennessee as well as our surrounding sister states. We have a covered dish lunch and a guest lecturer as well as several hours of swapping all kinds of plants and garden related items. The location is on the beautifully scenic Buffalo River south of Hohenwald, Tennessee at the Buffalo Canoeing Campground. You can camp, canoe the river, go fishing and load up on great plants! If you make it to one of our swaps then you'll be hooked for life!

The speaker for the Spring swap is Marty DeHart, host of NPTÂs A Volunteer Gardener. Marty is an expert at propagation techniques; cultivating a wide variety of plants and shrubs suited for this climate; hosts the "What's New" at the garden center segment on Volunteer Gardener and showcases groups of plants that share similar growing requirements. She is also the head grower of a local nursery. Her topic will be about native plants that are great garden subjects for shade, including dry shade -- even difficult places like under pine trees. There will be some plant demonstration, and others that folks can view at their leisure on a laptop slideshow. She will cover how to grow them and also explore happy combinations, like what goes great with Hosta, Hellebores, etc. Mostly she will focus on perennials, but also include some shrubs, too.

If a truck load of free plants, awesome food, informative lectures and meeting wonderfully generous people in a gorgeous setting interests you and you would like more information then hop on over to the TN Forum or visit our website at http://www.midtnplantswap.com or email me directly for a copy of the MTPS Info Sheet.

It's the most fun you'll ever have with your clothes on!