Conservation comment: Are those plants you want to share goodies or baddies?

The WhEB is the home of Sustainable Whanganui Trust which is located inside the old prison building at the Whanganui Resource Recovery Centre, 83 Maria Place. Photo / supplied

The Whanganui Environment Base (WhEB), on the Whanganui Resource Recovery Centre (WRRC) premises, has a table in the porch for donated plants. Gardeners who love sharing their excess seedlings and other live plant material drop them off – labelled or unlabelled – sometimes when nobody is on deck to receive them.

Visitors make a donation for the plants they want to take away, just as they do for other items in the Re-Use Academy (RUA) inside the WhEB.

All kinds of healthy plants have been donated by generous gardeners: vegetable and flower seedlings, annuals, perennials, bulbs, corms, rhizomes and, once, a tray of buxus hedging. Dahlia plants have been presented in used coffee cups.

Balsam was a new species to me. I happily paid a dollar for a punnet of six seedlings. They all took, easily, once planted. Well, they flourished; the following spring there were dozens. Meanwhile, on the Wairarapa Garden Tour in November 2016, I noticed tall balsam seedlings had taken over a semi-shady patch the size of a primary school swimming pool.

One learns from one's mistakes and ignorance. Last spring I weeded out all but six of the balsam that had self-seeded in one part of my garden. These unwanted annuals were added to my compost bin where they did no harm.

While on duty at the WhEB, I noticed some suspicious-looking seedlings that were labelled nikau palm. A note in the day book said, 'Someone has been bringing seedlings of that awful palm, again'. They were actually the dreaded phoenix palm (Phoenix canariensis).

Luckily, one Saturday morning when I was on duty, I met the nice chap who had lovingly potted the seedlings up. We had a wee chat. Out came Plant Me Instead – Central Districts from the Sustainable Whanganui library. Our kōrero lasted ten minutes, after which that generous man understood what had happened in his yard beneath the nikau. Birds had eaten the phoenix palm fruit and dispersed the seeds.

It is a joy to get cuttings of rosemary and geranium species going in a jar on my kitchen windowsill; they are so easy to propagate and make great gifts. Parsley, lettuce and rocket seedlings that flourish all over my property can be potted up and taken to the WhEB too.

I have frequently been a benefactor of plants obtained from the WhEB but I need to learn about the unfamiliar ones and manage them. Jerusalem artichokes come up year after year out the back, making a great show of little sunflowers on tall stems in autumn. But I planted them as bit close to one of my feijoa trees and the fruit are smaller this year. I've learned how to cook the knobbly rhizomes; they make delicious soup.

Sometimes donors are unable to bring their plants in, so WhEBsters will pick them up if their location is not far away. Agapanthus and phoenix palm are pest plants so they must not be distributed. Instead, they will be added to the WhEB worm farms.

Margi Keys has moved on from her weekly volunteering stint at the WhEB but remains a supporter of Sustainable Whanganui Trust. She is a member of Whanganui Regional Museum Botanical Group, Tongariro Natural History Society and Forest & Bird.