7 Propagating Cold Hardy Plants That Won’t Cost You a Dime

Every hobby farmer knows the feeling of staring at a bare fence line or an empty garden bed, calculating the nursery bill to fill it. But the most resilient and rewarding properties are often built with patience, not just purchases. By learning to work with nature’s own multiplication methods, you can fill your landscape with beautiful, functional, and cold-hardy plants for free.

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Propagating Plants for Free: A Seasonal Guide

Expanding your plant stock for free hinges on two simple techniques: cuttings and divisions. The method you choose depends entirely on the plant’s growth habit and the time of year. Understanding this rhythm is the first step to a self-sustaining landscape.

Cuttings involve snipping off a piece of a parent plant and encouraging it to grow its own roots. For the hardy, woody plants on this list, we’re primarily talking about hardwood cuttings, taken during the dormant season from late fall to early spring. This is when the plant’s energy is stored in the wood, ready for a burst of growth.

Divisions, on the other hand, are for plants that spread by their roots, sending up new shoots or "suckers" from the ground. This is less a cutting and more a surgical separation. You simply dig up a portion of the spreading plant, roots and all, and move it to a new location. This is best done in the cool weather of early spring or fall to minimize transplant shock.

Willow Cuttings for a Fast-Growing Living Fence

Willows are practically designed to be propagated. They contain a natural rooting hormone, and their desire to grow is so strong that you can often just push a freshly cut branch into damp soil and walk away. This makes them unrivaled for projects needing rapid results.

If you need a quick privacy screen, a living fence, or a windbreak, willow is your answer. Simply take 12- to 24-inch cuttings from year-old wood in late winter or early spring, before the buds break. You can place them in a bucket of water to pre-sprout roots or plant them directly where you want them to grow.

The major tradeoff with willow is its aggressive, water-seeking root system and its relatively short lifespan. Never plant them near septic systems, water lines, or foundations. Willow’s strength is its speed, not its permanence, making it a fantastic temporary solution or a feature for a wide-open, damp area of your property.

Red Twig Dogwood: Cuttings for Winter Color

Red Twig Dogwood is a landscape workhorse, offering subtle summer foliage and then stealing the show with brilliant red stems in the dead of winter. Propagating it is the key to creating a dramatic, colorful mass planting without the nursery price tag.

Like willow, Dogwood roots readily from hardwood cuttings taken during dormancy. Take 8- to 12-inch cuttings from the brightest red stems—this is the youngest, most vigorous growth from the previous season. Place them in a pot of moist soil or directly in a prepared garden bed, burying about two-thirds of the cutting.

The best part is that propagation encourages the plant’s best feature. To maintain that vibrant red color, you need to prune out the older, duller, brownish stems every year or two anyway. Every pruning cut you make is a potential new plant, turning routine maintenance into a productive act of multiplication.

Currants and Gooseberries: Rooting Fruiting Wood

Currants and gooseberries are some of the easiest fruiting shrubs to propagate, allowing you to expand your berry patch exponentially after just one initial purchase. A single healthy bush can generate dozens of new plants over a few years.

The process is identical to propagating Dogwood. In late fall after the leaves have dropped, or in early spring before buds swell, take 10-inch cuttings from healthy, one-year-old canes. You can identify this wood by its lighter color and smoother bark. Stick them in a sheltered nursery bed for a year, and by the following spring, you’ll have well-rooted, transplant-ready bushes.

The key here is patience. A cutting won’t produce a significant harvest for two or three years. This isn’t a quick fix for an empty space, but a long-term investment. The goal is to create a sustainable, multi-generational berry patch that costs you nothing but time.

Expanding Your Raspberries with Root Divisions

Raspberries multiply differently than woody shrubs, and trying to root a cane cutting will only lead to frustration. These plants spread by sending out underground runners, which then pop up as new canes, or "suckers," often several feet from the parent plant.

These suckers are not weeds; they are free raspberry plants. In the early spring, as new growth appears, simply choose a healthy-looking sucker that’s at least 6-8 inches tall. Use a sharp spade to cut a circle around it, severing its connection to the main plant, and lift the whole section of soil, root, and cane. Immediately transplant it to its new home and water it well.

This is more of a transplanting operation than a propagation one. The crucial detail is to do it early in the season before the plant puts too much energy into leaf growth. Your raspberry patch wants to expand, and your only job is to direct that expansion where you want it to go.

Propagating Hardy Sedum from Simple Stem Pieces

Hardy sedums, like the popular ‘Autumn Joy’, are succulents built for survival and effortless propagation. They are perfect for hot, dry spots, rock gardens, or borders where nothing else seems to thrive. Their ability to root from the tiniest piece makes them incredibly easy to spread.

Propagation can be done anytime during the growing season. Just snap off a 4- to 6-inch piece of stem, pull off the lower set of leaves, and stick it an inch or two deep in the soil. You don’t even need to water it much; in fact, overwatering is the most common reason new cuttings fail.

The mistake many make is treating sedum like a delicate flower. It thrives on neglect. The less you fuss with a sedum cutting, the more likely it is to root. It’s a perfect plant for filling gaps and covering ground with almost zero effort.

Containing and Propagating Mint via Root Divisions

Mint is the poster child for aggressive spreaders. The challenge with mint is not getting more of it, but preventing it from taking over your entire garden. Propagation, in this case, is a byproduct of necessary containment.

Mint spreads via shallow, fast-growing roots called rhizomes. The only sane way to grow it is in a container or a fully enclosed raised bed. When it inevitably tries to escape by sending runners over the edge or through a drainage hole, you have your free plant material.

Simply dig up these escaped runners, ensuring each piece has some roots attached, and pot them up. You can give them away or start new pots for different areas. Never propagate mint by planting it directly in a garden bed unless your goal is to farm nothing but mint. Think of propagation as harvesting the escapees.

Forsythia: Rooting Branches for Spring Blooms

Forsythia is the classic harbinger of spring, exploding with yellow flowers before almost anything else has woken up. Its vigorous, arching growth habit makes it incredibly simple to propagate, allowing you to create a dense, flowering hedge for free.

Forsythia can be propagated with standard hardwood cuttings, just like Dogwood or Currants. But an even easier, hands-off method is simple layering. Find a low-hanging, flexible branch, bend it down to the ground, and use a rock or a landscape pin to secure a section of it firmly against the soil. In a few months, that point of contact will have grown roots, and you can snip it from the parent plant to create a new shrub.

This plant’s main drawback is its wild growth, which can look messy if not pruned regularly after it flowers. But this also means you have a constant supply of potential new plants. Forsythia’s unruly nature is a gift for the frugal farmer looking to create a big impact with minimal effort.

Filling your property doesn’t have to empty your wallet. By observing how these tough, cold-hardy plants grow and multiply, you can use their natural tendencies to your advantage. It’s a strategy of partnership, not purchase, building a resilient and productive landscape one free plant at a time.