For. Ever.
We bought some nice expensive ones years ago, but they died. Since they grow wild around here, I couldn't justify buying more, so I read up and learned that they start reasonably reliably from cuttings.
Some say you should root them in water with willow twigs [which release a rooting hormone into the water]. Others say you should just stick them in the ground as soon as possible.
I got my cuttings and stuck them in water with willow for a day - I don't know if that was long enough to get enough hormone from the willow, but I figured it wouldn't hurt while we decided just where to put them.
I got 6 cuttings from a neighbor whose wild bush sprouted at the mouth of a culvert, down in the ditch.
We stuck 4 cuttings next to a wet area that grows a lot of orange grass [Acorus calamus] and we stuck 2 cuttings on the hill between the chicken coop and the veg garden where the garden drainage runs down the hill. They'll get plenty of water there.
We protected them with fence to keep the rabbits off them and mulched around them with cardboard so they can get a head start from the grass.
Fingers crossed that most of them take. I love elderberries.
