Hello. I'm from the UK. What are your thoughts on trading to the UK round here? I'm hoping I can learn a lot from the people on here as I'm someone who likes to grow all sorts of stuff that is not the usual stuff people seem to grow in gardens. I like to grow guava, achocha and other stuff. I mainly garden by trial and error as I actually am quite an amature to all of this. NIce to meet you all.
Virtually impossible to trade any plants other than seeds across the Atlantic, if that's what you're thinking about. Both North America and Europe have tough import regulations to prevent the spread of plant pests and diseases.
Even with seeds, there are restrictions. In generally, importation of seeds of shrubs and trees are strictly regulated and will need phytosanitary certificates from their country of origin, but those of most herbaceous plants are permitted (into Canada) within certain guidelines. Importation of seeds for propagation may come under another set of regulations - the Canadian Border Service Agency polices these regulations. The problem is that regulations may change depending on what is happening around the rest of the world. For example, the occurrence of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) had some effect on importation of plant products from affected countries. It gets complicated trying to navigate through the labyrinth of regulations - there are multiple agencies involved - the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Justice Department, Canadian Border Services, Food and Agriculture Canada. However, there is an automated import reference system you can use. I believe importation of plant materials into US can be even more complicated - I am not familiar with their regulations. It may even differ from state to state.
Some reputable suppliers conform to all the regs. Please don't buy foreign (to your country of residence) stuff off eBay, unless you check the vendor carefully. Thank you for caring enough to ask the question in public. Many don't or won't. Look at the |nvasive Plants forum here to get an idea of the problems that can arise (like TaDa-TaDa - Japanese Knotweed), apart from diseases & insect/animal pests. Check out "CITES". Interesting reading if you like think about endangered species also. www.cites.org gb
There are so many lovely plants in the world it's just a shame that if we introduced some of them into other countries they just cause havoc. I like being careful but I also like having unusual stuff. I do try to be careful.
