Return to your roots: heirloom and passalong plants forge a botanical bond with friends past and present.

Catherine Longest has a name for every plant in her sprawling garden.

There's Indian hyacinth and porcelain vine, Japanese climbing fern and oakleaf hydrangea.

And then there are the plants with names you certainly won't find at garden centers--names like Bobbie Horton, Betty Guest, Linda Bryant, and Eleanor Robbins.

"The fairy roses I rooted from Billie Trott, and Floyce Shaw gave me this wild azalea," Longest says on an afternoon tour of her 26-acre property northwest of Oxford.

With its roots buried deep in the heritage of north Mississippi, this garden bears connections to family, friends, and neighbors--some of whom Longest still sees often and others whose leafy legacy has long outlived them.

Catherine and her husband, Bill, who is now retired from the University of Mississippi biology department, bought their home in the College Hill community in 1968. Back then, what is now their one-acre rose garden was nothing but a corn patch.

"We came here new, and people just shared what they had," she says. "Everybody around here would give you something."

It's a philosophy of gardening that's more common on rural homesteads than in most modern suburbs, and it harks back to an era when people had more time for the garden--and, maybe, more patience.

But the notion of growing antique or "heirloom" varieties remains attractive to old and new gardeners alike, thanks to the uniqueness of those plants and their charm as living links to the past.

It also doesn't hurt that many older varieties tend to be more resistant to disease and insects than their newer counterparts--or that filling a garden with both old and new varieties of "passalong" plants from friends is a steal compared to buying them.

In Hattiesburg, Moran Pope enjoys the unique plants in his garden almost as much as the stories that go with them.

When "Granny's Rose" bursts into pink blooms at the end of April, he tells of its journey from the old homeplace of his mother, Florence Burrow, in rural Jefferson Davis County.

"When my mother was in her late 70s, she asked me to take her over to her old home," he says. "And when I picked her up, she had a shovel and bucket. I asked no questions."

When they found the place, the house was long gone. But after digging through the brash and bramble around where it once stood, his mother finally found the old rose bush and asked him to dig it up.

It lived in her yard near the University of Southern Mississippi campus until her death in 1971 and has been dug up and replanted in the yards of the three houses where Moran has lived since then. He recently rooted cuttings so his granddaughters can carry on the tradition.

Folks who enjoy collecting and sharing antique varieties are more likely to talk about their plants in terms of culture than horticulture, says Felder Rushing, who co-wrote the book Passalong Plants with Steve Bender.

"They talk about people and places and events," Rushing says. "So these plants bridge the science and the stories, the head and the heart."

There are four things that make a plant variety, whether old or new, a bona fide passalong, Rushing says. They include its value, in terms of beauty, fragrance, practical use, and history; its ability to grow in different climates and soils and in spite of a gardener's lack of horticultural skills; its resistance to major pests and diseases; and the ease of propagating it by saving seeds, rooting cuttings, or dividing the plant.

"Think of passalong plants as, in a way, almost spreading themselves," he says. "The easier they are to enjoy, grow, and share, the more people are likely not only to grow them but also to pass them along to more gardeners."

Although the nostalgia around older varieties is nice, Rushing says what gardeners interested in passalong plants are really after is variety.

"The truth is, most people are not really into gardening--they just want to fit in with the least amount of trouble," he says. "That means a lot of grass, mowed edges, and pruned shrubs. But when you start talking about passalong plants, you're talking about adding a little spice to the neighborhood."

To find these coveted older plants, simply stroll through the older parts of your town in each of the four seasons--and don't be shy about asking neighbors to share. Even a drive in the country can yield treasured blossoms along with a history lesson. "Start noticing the fields for patches of narcissus," says Mississippi State University horticulturist Norman Winter. "If you bother to get out of the car and look, you will see which varieties tend to naturalize over the years. Many times you can spot them and know a house was there a long time ago."

"The diversity is out there, and it's coming back," Rushing adds. "If you have a row of one thing in the garden, stick in two or three of something else, and start to have that diversity."

Terry Rector, who retired recently as Warren County director for the MSU Extension Service, employs the same philosophy in his own garden.

"Whatever is the hottest plant everybody has to have, I don't want it," he says.

Rector is building a new house on a 40-acre site 12 miles southeast of Vicksburg, but his garden there has been in the works since he bought the property more than a decade ago.

In his collection is a rose bush rooted from a friend's 60-year-old plant. The original has died, but he calls its copy "Miss Ruby" after its owner--since no one knows its proper name anyway.

"A lot of roses came from Europe back in the 1800s, and people planted them here. But as folks moved into these hybrid tea roses, the older varieties were getting lost because no one was planting them," Rector says.

"If you want to impress a lady, order something from the florist--but those are not made to be raised in a normal yard. People get disgusted and say they can't raise roses, but they've just got to plant the right ones."

In Grenada, Jimmy Lewis, owner of Cedar Creek Nursery, says he doesn't often include older varieties in his professional landscaping projects. "They're usually not as showy as the new plants and not as widely available," he says.

That hasn't stopped him, though, from using a few in his own suburban yard. There are crape myrtles from the site of a log cabin at his mother-in-law's homeplace and jonquils dug from the cemetery where her grandfather is buried.

A history buff attracted to antique plants mainly for their heritage, Lewis is partial to using magnolias in the landscape and enjoys introducing clients to vitex trees. "If we do a landscape, we'll often throw one in," he says. "And people always want to know, 'What is that one?'"

RELATED ARTICLE: Living history.

What is an heirloom plant?

An heirloom plant is commonly defined as a flowering plant or vegetable variety that is at least 50 years old and is "open-pollinated," which means it can be propagated from seed into new plants that look exactly like the parent. Most are hardy and easy to grow.

"These plants withstood not only the test of time, vigor, and endurance, but also the popularity test," says MSU horticulturist Norman Winter. "The plants are still here because of beauty; ugly plants would have been discarded years ago."

Heirloom vegetables tend to have stronger flavors than their modern hybridized counterparts. Connoisseurs of heirloom tomatoes relish their unusual colors and distinct tastes, though some are prone to cracking and diseases. A few favorite heirloom tomato varieties include the wildly popular "Brandywine," the dark-hued "Cherokee Purple," and the huge pink "Mortgage Lifter." Recommended flower varieties include intensely fragrant sweet peas and narcissus, historic irises, old-fashioned poppies, and--of course--roses.

While you probably won't find heirloom plants at your local nursery, many are are still available through mail-order catalogs such as Victory Seed Company (www.victoryseeds.com) and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (www.southernexposure.com) or at flower shows hosted by local botanical societies. Home gardeners can even buy seeds for the same varieties of flowers and vegetables grown more than 200 years ago at Thomas Jefferson's mountaintop Virginia home at www.monticello.org.

What is a passalong plant?

Harder to define but equally sought after by many gardeners, a passalong plant can be any variety that is easily propagated and shared. These come in the form of trees, shrubs, vines, annuals, and perennials. Some of the most commonly found passalong plants in Mississippi include rose of Sharon, aspidistra, daylilies, liriope, nandina, and yarrow. Even large shrubs like hydrangea and flowering quince can be easily rooted from cuttings.

There are only a few rules of thumb for dividing and sharing these generally hardy passalong plants: Evergreens root best in the summer, while deciduous plants root well in fall or winter. Dividing is best done in the season opposite a plant's blooming period. For plants that propagate by seed, seeds can be collected after bloom time and saved for planting during the following spring. The best time to take cuttings from roses is during the cool winter months.