Denton County Magazine • July August 23 • PROPOGATE AND SWAP

A growing community of green-thumb enthusiasts in Denton swap and share their bounty.

In 2020, a grassroots group of Denton-area gardeners and plant enthusiasts rallied together to cultivate community during the pandemic’s quarantine. When the city and nation basically shut down, garden centers were classified as nonessential, and nearly overnight, access to plants and gardening supplies became tenuous at best. To fight this supply chain problem, backyard growers took matters into their own hands with plant propagation and decided to share.

The idea for a contact-free plant stand was the brainchild of Helen Sanderson, who first set out metal shelves for plant swaps on the front curb at her Denton home. “I had gotten really into plants as a pandemic hobby and had the idea of finding a way for the community to share plants with one another in an easily accessible way,” Sanderson said.

Soon word spread around town about the free little plant stand and a community grew. Encouraged by the safe access to swapped plants, Denton hobby growers and houseplant aficionados began leaving lovingly prepared clippings of rare plants, seeds, glass jars for propagating, and even aquarium water as a free DIY plant fertilizer. The serendipitous allure of the plant stand became a ray of hope for many as they anticipated what they might find, and prepared plant cuttings to propagate for people they would never know.

Among the plants that have been shared are house plants like pathos, heirloom herbs such as Egyptian spinach and shiso, and Texas native flowers like rudbeckia and rare irises.

Sanderson formed a Facebook group for the plant stand and shared the reins with a collection of social media administrators to help the plant-growing community and to set standards for using the plant stand and engaging with others. Mindfulness for being fair, rules for posting photos and using culturally aware terms for plants with historically insensitive names became a hallmark of the plant stand culture.

Tyler Dawson, one of the administrators, took over hosting the plant stand at his Denton home in the summer of 2022.

Dawson and Sanderson worked together to plan the transition and limit any delays to the use of the plant stand. Faced with complying with his neighborhood’s HOA requirements, Dawson leaned into the budding new community.

“We had people who came out to pour the concrete slab, nail wood and paint,” Dawson said. With an army of plant people in his corner, the new stand was completed within one week.

Like the mighty oak that grows from a small acorn, the plant stand and the leadership have grown to fill their roles. Dawson was not an avid gardener when he first joined the group. At the height of the pandemic, Dawson and his partner were working from home while their children were out of school.

“We tried to start a vegetable garden,” Dawson said. “I started looking for community to plug into that I could learn from and found the plant stand.” It began as a family project to keep busy and develop more self-reliance in food supply but it turned into a fascination with aloes and succulents and a new appreciation for plants beyond the plate.

While Dawson felt humbled by the outpouring of support for his new leadership, the camaraderie came as no surprise to Sanderson. “The Denton plant community is filled with kind, generous people who come together to share their love of plants,” she said.

Take a Plant, Leave a Plant 2225 Southway in Denton Hours: The plant stand never closes. Administrators request that guests be respectful when visiting.

The group is on Facebook, where plant-stand policies and procedures are outlined.