Which plants to use as wedding favors and party gifts is a frequent question that we receive. With a resurgence of garden parties during spring and summer afternoons, these tips will help make your garden party even more special. Whether you present them as thank you gifts or as wedding favors, our suggestions will make you appear the thoughtful hostess.

Garden Parties, which were common during the Victorian Period, can run the gamut from a dressy afternoon tea to everyone arriving in their gardening ware to help work in the hostess's garden. The garden party is, also, an excellent idea to bring people together for gardening clubs, wedding showers or for the first time homeowner garden. Each guest brings a plant (small shrubs, ornamental grasses or other perennial plants) and a tool, or other piece of gardening equipment, whether new or a gift from the guests own tool shed.

For parties with gift exchanges, guests can bring items relating to gardening such as a plant, tool, container, garden ornament, etc... The hostess will need to somewhat define what types of items that guests should bring such as indoor, outdoor, flowering, non flowering, tools, etc.

One way of giving away plants as favors is to use small potted plants on the tables as all or part of the table decorations or tiny potted plants can be used as place card holders. The nursery pots can be covered with tissue paper, burlap or other fabric and tied with a colorful ribbon or twine or even repotted into inexpensive decorative or plan clay pots. Plants that work great for this are: evergreen herbs (rosemary, thyme, sage,lavender), mini palms, mini schefflera, young Shasta daisies, sunflowers seedlings, young ornamental grasses or bamboo as well as starter plants such as tomatoes.

Handing out seedlings as wedding favors has been popular for quite sometime. However, there are some considerations to keep in mind.

• Seedlings are seasonal and only available November through May. During the summer months, select small potted evergreens or potted herbs.

• Plants need to be ordered 6 to 8 weeks in advance from the nursery or greenhouse so that delivery can be timed for the week before the wedding.

• Designate a person, or persons, to be responsible for separating the seedlings and bagging each one with a handful of moist peat. This needs to be done within a couple of days before the ceremony so that they are still fresh and then kept in a cool, dark area such as garage, basement or pantry.

• Where will the plants be held (at the ceremony or reception) before being handed out? It should again be a cool, dark area out of the way. Heat and sun will dry them out possibly causing the plants to wilt severely or kill them. Depending on how many guests are expected, these boxes can take up valuable space.

• The most commonly used plant varieties for handing out as wedding favors are: pines, spruces, dogwoods, lilacs, red maples, even late spring/summer flowering bulbs.

Using plants for wedding favors is long lived. Be sure to keep in mind your guests lifestyle. If most of your guests are city dwellers residing in apartments, they are not going to have anywhere to plant most shrubs or trees, so herbs or flowers would be quite thoughtful.