It’s time for money plant! Also called Lunaria, the money plant is a staff and customer favorite. The white, iridescent little seed pods look like fancy tissue paper on a stem. It’s already dry when get it so it’s great in wreaths, bouquets and all sorts of other arrangements. The issue is that hardly anyone around her grows it. Probably because a successful harvest is hit or miss. I’ve tried half a dozen times to grow it with no luck. Others have great luck with it and I’m not sure why. I’ve moved it around the yard with the same dismal results. If you can get it to grow, it self seeds, so it should be easy once it takes root.
Growing the money plant is just half the battle. To expose the white papery middle, you have to remove the seed pod cover by hand. This is tricky and time consuming to do without damaging the interior of the pod – which is the real prize. Because it takes so long to prepare to sell, it’s also very expensive! We’re buying stems between $2 and $5 a stem and selling them for between $5 and $9 a stem. We’ve had a few stems here and there in the past but we hardly ever get it in any quantity.
This week a grower/artist named Marian from the Brick Hill Plant Lab just a few miles from my shop reached out and let me know she had money plant to sell. We bought everything she had! As soon as we posted them on social media we had requests from people who wanted to come right over and get some. Lots of people mentioned it being a plant that they grew up with, that they remember in their mother’s or grandmother’s yard. Money plant is a perfect flower to showcase on Saturdays when the shop is open. It’s so showy it definitely gets people in the door to check it out. Bonus: Marian stopped over to see how the sales were going. We are getting together for a coffee date in the next few weeks to see how we may be able to collaborate on some projects in the future!
