Arlene Marturano is a master gardener, writer, and educator. As an advocate of gardening as a tool for learning, she helped develop the Carolina Children's Garden at the Sandhill Research and Education Center. Using plants and animals as content for teaching reading, she has presented her Reading the Environment program nationwide. She is an education consultant with T.E.A.C.H.

Horticulture has its fashion trends just like home furnishing, clothing, cosmetics, hairstyles and vehicles. My 20–year–old azaleas are out of date! Even though they are healthy, vigorous bloomers displaying magnificent color for weeks each spring; providing home and shelter to rabbits, towhees, and brown thrashers; attracting pollinators; and bringing visual delight not found this side of Calloway Gardens, these 20th century plantings are out of fashion with the times.

I was toting flowering branches of one azalea cultivar to local garden centers, like one carries swatches of upholstery fabric or wallpaper to the home decorator, in hopes of finding a match to extend one bed. Repeatedly, I was met with “We don’t carry it anymore,” “They are an old variety,” and “You won’t find that in Columbia.”

In case you haven’t noticed, multi-seasonal blooming azaleas are the current rage. Encore® cultivars are everywhere.

Never a servant of fashion, I was determined to replenish my display of azaleas with identical plants. I would become a midwife to the single parents in my bed using a painless method to get new plants from old: layering. Layering encourages new roots to form on a stem while the stem is still attached to the parent. The newly rooted stem is then detached to become an offspring growing on its own root system.

Layering, an asexual propagation process, often occurs naturally if flexible branches touch the soil and “ take root” as with raspberries, blackberries, honeysuckle, Virginia creeper, and climbing roses. Sometimes layering occurs accidentally when children or pets “trample” on plants when playing.

The simple layering method involves digging a small hole near the base of the healthy parent and bending a narrow (no thicker than a pencil) branch into the hole after stripping any leaves off the section to be buried. The bend will induce rooting, but nicking the underside of the bent branch and applying a powdered growth hormone may speed things along.

The branch tip should remain vertical and above ground with leaves intact. This will be the top of the new plant. Cover the buried branch with a layer of soil mixed with peat moss or leaf mold. Secure the branch into the ground with a hairpin, a V–shaped clothespin, or place a brick or rock over the soil to hold the branch in place. Scatter a cup of granular fertilizer over the ground to boost rooting. Water the layers regularly checking for root formation.

Layering works best in spring when plants are in their growth spurt mode. The new plant may be ready to transplant by next spring. Layering works well with other supple–limbed shrubs like quince, forsythia, clematis, daphne, cleyera, photinia, kerria, boxwood, wax myrtle, and abelia.

For gardeners who want their favorite plants to endure and to multiply despite market trends, layering is the option. Keeping these golden oldies around depends on the hands of midwives in the garden.