PBS Forum

Part one: general instructions:

Only fully paid members of the Pacific Bulb Society can participate. If you are not sure about your membership status you can contact the membership secretary Jane McGary or the treasurer Arnold Trachtenberg. Maybe the new EU Bulb Exchange is an incentive for you to join the society?

We very much apologize towards our non EU members. This new scheme can only be accessed by members with a postal address within the European Union. We are very sorry not to be able to receive from and post to countries outside the EU for legal reasons. For those of you not sure whether you can order seeds or bulbs from the USA or the EU, or if you have not ordered before, please contact the Exchange Director.

The language of our society is English. But If you do not feel confident in communicating in English, you can contact Uli Urban, our new EU Board member, in German, French (and basic Spanish and Portuguese) johannes-ulrich-urban@t-online.de

There will be two phases of distributions per year of seed as well as bulbs, one in autumn for winter and spring growing bulbs and one in spring for summer growing bulbs. All the necessary details will be announced in due course. Start looking for a call for donations in March and September.

So.. please think of the many fellow bulb enthusiasts when you dig up bulbs or when you harvest seeds. As the EU covers very different climates and many members will have a greenhouse: all bulb and seed material is welcome. The success or failure of this new scheme depends on your participation.

Your contacts will be Johannes Ulrich Urban (Uli) johannes-ulrich-urban@t-online.de and Martin Bohnet (Garak) garak@code-garak.de. They will be announcing all future EU seed and bulb exchanges.

Part two: Instructions for Donors

Please remember, that only fully paid members of the Pacific Bulb Society have access to the scheme and that you must have a postal address in an EU country. For legal reasons, we cannot receive or ship bulbs or seeds from outside the EU. We apologize again towards our non-EU members.

Receipt of donations, ordering, packing and postage will be handled through a central address in Germany. We are most grateful to our member Martin Bohnet (garak@code-garak.de) who volunteers to do this demanding job. His postal address for your donations is

Martin Bohnet
Ludwigstr. 1
73035 Göppingen
Germany


Please refrain from sending material outside the given time window now and in the future. We plan to offer the opportunity to distribute short-lived seeds or bulbs in unscheduled distributions. But for the time being we would like to first start with a standard offering which won’t include short-lived material. The timing of the EU-exchange will not be identical with the one in the US, so please read the announcements carefully to avoid confusion.

Please do remember to donate only clean and healthy material; nobody wants to spread new pests to the manager of the scheme and/or to the recipients and it cannot be his duty to clean the donations.

Please label each bag with the precise name of the plant (scientific name if possible) and your own name so that all donations are clearly identified and can be referred to the donor.

Can we ask you for a tremendous favor? On a volunteer basis, of course. The workload for packing the donations into many small packets is enormous, for seeds in particular. If you feel able to do so, would you consider pre-packing and labeling your donations? We suggest portions of 10-15 seeds per item if you have plenty, between 5-10 seeds of the not so plenty, for the very rare ones maybe 2 per pack but not less than 3 items. If the overall number is too small, it will cause more frustration than pleasure within the membership as experienced several times in the past. If you are happy to do so, the PBS can supply seed envelopes directly to you without charge. Please write to Martin Bohnet (garak@code-garak.de) to receive some.

Part three: ordering and payment

Once the list of donations has gone online in this forum, every fully paid member of the PBS with a postal address in the EU can order from the seeds and bulbs on offer. You do not need to be a donor to be entitled to order. There is no limit of how many positions from the list you can request, but you are only allocated one portion of each item.

Please send your request by e-mail directly to Martin Bohnet, who is the director of the EU Bulb and Seed Exchange. Please do NOT send your request to the forum, these requests cannot be served. Please make sure you do not use the reply button when sending your request. Martin will confirm the incoming message within a day.

Martin's e-mail: garak@code-garak.de

Orders will be accepted during a three day time window after the list went online, closure will be announced in the forum. Distribution will then be at random so that everybody has the same chance to get the rare items in short supply.

We have discussed the payment situation and found the easiest way is to keep everything in US-Dollars.

Each portion of seed will be charged 2 US $, each portion of bulbs will be 3 US $. For very big/heavy bulbs this may be doubled. Leftover portions of seeds from 2 earlier exchanges (back to last year's same season exchange) will be charged at 1$ if still available.  Postage will be added at cost, converted into US $.

Donors will get their rounded up postage expenses or a minimum of 5$ as a bonus. Sending several packages per time period will give you the postage sum, but not the 5$ baseline for each package.

Payment for items from the EU-BX can only be made by PayPal in US Dollars to the PayPal account of the Pacific Bulb Society. Please make sure that the PBS receives the amount due in US Dollars. Please go to the Bulb Exchange page and fill in the details and continue. It guides you directly on to your PayPal account. No cheques or credit cards can be accepted. Enclosed in the order, every recipient will receive a payment slip showing the details.

Again, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Uli Urban:johannes-ulrich-urban@t-online.de