05/16/2026
My latest article in Self Reliance Magazine is now available!
Plant propagation is one of the most practical and satisfying ways to expand your gardens without expanding your budget. It’s thrift in the old New England sense of the word. Making more from what you already have. Here at Starboard , most of the gardens have been built slowly and with more patience than money.
A surprising number of plants are eager to multiply if given half a chance. Perennials can be divided, herbs rooted in water, shrubs started from cuttings, and vegetables allowed to self-seed. Once you begin looking at the garden this way, you stop seeing a single plant and start seeing possibilities.
Every spring at Starboard, I divide clumps of perennials that have outgrown their places. Daylilies, bee balm, hostas, and irises all seem happier for it. What begins as one crowded patch becomes three or four new plantings tucked elsewhere around the farm. It feels a bit like gardening magic, though it’s really just the natural generosity of plants.
Tomato suckers root easily. Lettuce allowed to bolt often scatters next year’s crop without any help from me. And herbs, especially mint and thyme, seem determined to remind you that abundance is their preferred state!!
Rooting cuttings on the kitchen windowsill is the norm around here. Geraniums, coleus, houseplants... It's so satisfying to slip a small stem into a jar of water and watching tiny white roots appear where there had been none before.
Of course, thrift gardening requires patience, and patience is not particularly fashionable anymore. Nursery plants offer instant fullness and immediate results, while propagation asks you to think ahead a season or two. But I’ve found the slower way often creates gardens with more character. I have beautiful plants passed along from neighbors, divided from old family gardens, or rooted from a cutting taken years ago carry stories with them.
My most precious flowers were never the expensive ones bought in garden centers. They came instead from the hands of people I loved.
A Stargazer Lily from Deb Skeate.
Rhubarb from Donna.
Perennial Sweet Pea from Mary Mallory.
One of Almeda's orange poppies from Kathy at Point of Main.
Yellow Flag Irises from Leslie.
A white lilac from Jamie.
Irises dug carefully from Thelma’s front yard.
And over the years, countless plants from Mum, usually handed over in old pots, coffee cans, or wrapped gently in newspaper with the words ... “Here, take a piece of this home.”
That is the kind of gardening I cherish most.
Each time those flowers bloom, they bring the giver back for a little while. The lilies remind me of conversations shared over tea and the easy comfort of old friendship.I think that’s part of why old-fashioned gardens feel so alive. They are rarely made up of plants alone. They are made of people, too. Of shared cuttings, divided roots, neighborly generosity, and the quiet passing along of something beautiful from one life into another.
I can walk the gardens and trace whole chapters of my life through my plants This one came from a dear friend. That one from someone now gone. Another from a family garden long since changed. The plants root themselves into the soil, but also into memory.
And perhaps that is one of the loveliest things about gardening this way. The garden never really belongs to just one person. It becomes a gathering place of shared histories, friendships, kindnesses, and small acts of generosity quietly blooming side by side.
I"ll be dividing perennials from my gardens on and off this weekend and into next week and plan to put the garden cart out next weekend. If you are in the neighborhood, please stop by and help yourself to a piece of Starboard for your garden
