Community: How to organise a plant / seed / harvest swap - Free guide

Seed and plant swaps offer a wonderful opportunity for people in a community to get together. A place to exchange growing tips and stories and to experience the buzz of a new growing season. They also offer a valuable chance for people to get seeds without exchanging money and to share the seeds and plants they love with other gardeners.

Anyone can Participate

People don't need to have seeds or plants to join a swap. Swaps can allow participants to make a donation for seeds or even to bring something else to swap - it might be baking, an unwanted cookery or gardening book, or the offer of gardening or other help. 

Your Guide to Organising a Seed Swap

This downloadable guide will help you plan and promote a swap, including a checklist of what to do on the day and afterwards, and tips beginners.  It also offers a variety of ideas on how you can engage people in the swap.

Download the PDF Guide

This step by step guide was written for Vertical Veg by Darja Fiser of Zelemenjava. It will walk you through how to organise a swap in you community.

Darja first organised a small swap for a few friends in her flat in Slovenia. It was so successful it has now grown into a national event!  Darja has since helped organise many other swaps. Learn more about her experiences in the recordings below. The guide draws on her wealth of experience, shares the tips she has learnt along the way, and points out the common pitfalls to watch out for.

A swap does not have to be large to be worth doing. They can happen on any scale - from a few friends in a flat or colleagues at work, right up to a large community event.

Hear from Darja: how it all started and her tips on organising a swap

i) Darja's amazing story - how a national event started from her flat

After growing too many seedlings in her small flat in her first year of growing, Darja Fišer organised a plant swap with her friends. The event was so successful it grew into a national event in Slovenia! Since then Darja has organised many different plant, seed and harvest swaps, both small and large. Here, Darja shares her story of how a small swap in her first year of growing took off to be replicated in cities across Slovenia.

ii) How to organise a swap, step by step

In this webinar, Darja shares her extensive experience and learning of how to organise a swap step by step, tips for success and common pitfalls to be aware of.