New Plants from Old: Simple, Natural, No-cost Plant Propagation

by Jackie French

New Plants from Old Why buy your garden, when you can grow it at no cost? Why limit your creativity to your nursery's range, when there's much more to choose from all around you? Written for Australian and New Zealand gardeners, this work tells you, in a non-technical way, the secret striking cuttings; cross-pollinating; layering; hybridising; and grafting. Full description

Genres: Nonfiction

112 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1991

About the author

Jackie is an award-winning writer, wombat negotiator and the Australian Children’s Laureate for 2014-2015. She is regarded as one of Australia’s most popular children’s authors, and writes across all genres - from picture books, history, fantasy, ecology and sci-fi to her much loved historical fiction. In her capacity as Australian Children’s Laureate, ‘Share a Story’ will be the primary philosophy behind Jackie’s two-year term.

Reviews

[Deb]

So much information and tips in this book. I hadn’t realised you could take cuttings or collect seeds and successfully grow new plants from such a variety of plants. It has also thrown out a few challenges. I have never seen rhubarb seeds before. On a rhubarb mission now.

[Rosemary]

2024: This time around I noted the advice about dealing with possums - Jackie French suggests buying a motion-sensing scarecrow that shoots a jet of water at passing birds or possums.

2022: Jackie French was the Australian Children's Laureate for 2014/15, and her writings span genres as diverse as gardening, vampires, Australian historical novels, and the story of Mary of Nazareth ("Just A Girl", which I enjoyed). Of these genres my favourite is gardening, where she is chatty, charming and unpretentious. From the preface: "When in doubt, just bung it in. It'll probably grow".

I love her vision for social security: "everyone taught how to grow their own; fruit and nut trees planted along every street, parks planted out to edibles, every high-rise with a roof garden, every school with at least one fruit tree for every kid enrolled". Sign me up.

This book is about gardening without the price tag. $25 fruit tree from the nursery? According to Jackie French, a fruit tree planted from seed may grow and give fruit long before the commercially grown one. Other low cost techniques include taking cuttings, and grafting, the reason I bought this book.

Sadly, rare seed supplier Phoenix Seeds has now closed (and the Avellano and Indigo I bought from them 8 years ago didn't manage to grow). There are a couple of other things that date this book - the "greenhouse effect" is mentioned instead of climate change, and Jackie French recommends using peat moss whereas peat bogs are carbon sinks, and harvesting them harms the environment.

This is a quick read and keeps its five star rating.

2014: Useful concise book. Love the introduction, and great resources for sourcing interesting seeds. Looking forward to trying out indigo (Indigofera australis) and Avellano (Gevuina avellana) from Phoenix Seeds Tasmania, thanks heaps for the tip!