Plant Sale - the story

Many of you have written comments here asking about the details behind our plant sale. We are finally getting a wonderfully wet, rainy day so I thought I'd sit and write a bit about the sale.

This first photo shows Tradescantia 'Little White Doll' which is the best Tradescantia in my garden. It stays in a clump and increases at a nice (but not alarming) rate. It's on my "to dig" list for this Wednesday. Back to the sale...

Five years ago my oldest daughter was in 9th grade and a new member of our high school marching band. They were having a multiple family garage sale (rummage sale/yard sale) to raise funds. We had no junk that we were willing to part with but I had many plants so I dug them up and brought them to the sale. It was mostly Echinacea (purple cone flowers), Rudbeckia (black eyed susans) and lots of daylilies. The daylilies were in buckets of water and when somebody purchased them I pulled them out and wrapped them in newspaper like a slab of meat at the butcher shop. I know for sure I took in at least $500 at that spot and told the parents that since I still had more plants, they should come to my house two weeks later and I'd have a plant sale from here. Most plants were not pre-potted and I dug as people ordered. I think I limped for two weeks after that but we took in another $1200 or $1400. Woohoo!

Since then the plant sale has gone through some changes. I try hard to pre-dig and pot up as much as possible. Each year the list of plants changes depending on what I have excess of in the garden. This year we'll have lots of Geranium cantabrigiense 'Karmina' that you see in this photo.

One hundred percent of our profit is split up and deposited in accounts for students in the marching band. They can't touch the money, it goes to help pay for the week of summer band camp. Many families in our area are having a hard time making ends meet. Some of them have two or three kids in the band and this sale really makes a difference. Students that work the whole sale have earned as much as $100 in their account.

I try hard to offer plants that look as good as what you would get at any top notch nursery. The botanical names are written on 8 inch long pieces of plastic mini-blinds. If I know the cultivar name, that too is written on the tag. Since I pot up roughly 600 plants, that's a lot of writing!

While I realize that many people aren't familiar with the botanical names, I find nick names very misleading. I do have plenty of lists available at the sale for people to look up names and planting information. Each year I also print out 6 - 8 color photos and laminate them for the sale. So slowly but surely my photos are increasing. Hopefully I will have photos of everything in a few more years. The photos always help sell the plants. People are used to buying things in bloom and don't realize they've been forced to bloom much earlier than their natural cycle. Our plants are not forced so if you buy Rudbeckia now, they don't look like much in their pots but come August...WOW!

The profits of three of the last four plants sales went to the marching band. In 2006 though I did not donate any money to them, and made that clear to every customer who came here. Still, I sold out of plants in a few hours. I had been very annoyed by some parents in the band at the previous sale and wasn't sure I wanted to continue to work with them. The band director at that time never once even looked me in the eye and said "Thank you". Maybe I was being petty but I felt it was a simple thing to say. Luckily we have a new director who is amazing. He even came and participated in the sale, something that had never happened before.

All the advance work, digging, dividing, moving soil, watering pots and so on is done by me. In past years my mom helped quite a bit and my daughter Lauren wrote many tags. This year my mom isn't here to help and Lauren is away at school. My husband Don is not a gardener but without him, this wouldn't be possible at all. He does much of the garden clean up including my potting area plus he picks up the slack in the household with laundry, food shopping, cooking and cleaning. Don takes care of all the things like making sure we have a money box with lots of change plus he runs the cashier table during the sale so that I can answer questions.

I wish I knew how to divide the Iberis in the above photo. There are four massive clumps of it just bursting into bloom and I would have liked to have some potted up.

This year we will offer Centaurea montana for the first time. As the sale was always here on our property, people were drawn to plants that were in bloom at the time of the sale (the sale is ALWAYS the Saturday before Mother's Day). Customers would walk my gardens and ask for things that were not potted up. Sometimes I would dig them and other times I just couldn't. This year they will be happy to get this plant but the pieces left in my garden probably won't bloom for me :-(

A big change this year is that the sale will be held at the school, Walt Whitman High School in South Huntington. Last year we had 40 students here and so many cars with customers that our road was almost impassable. One older woman insisted on trying to pet my doodle-dog even though she was asked not to and Calie jumped on her. The woman received a cut on her chin and we were all very nervous. I decided that I couldn't take a chance that my family would be sued for an accident on our property and the school immediately agreed to allow us to hold the sale there. Calie will be staying home.

Any of you who read my blog know I love Sedums and Sempervivums. There will be plenty of varieties available this year. In fact, I could dig many more but nothing is worse than digging a beautiful plant and then not having it sell.

People occasionally try to bargain or offer half price on a plant that is smaller than it's counterparts. My feeling is that this is a fund raiser, not a "let's clear Melanie's garden of all plants" so I don't allow any bargaining. I do allow people to come during the week before the sale though. During the sale itself I am the only person who can answer questions about perennials and there just isn't enough time for me to help every customer. By fielding a few customers in advance, it eases the crush that Saturday morning. Plus I can usually dig more plants to replace what was sold.

This is Heliopsis 'Summer Nights'. I have a large clump but will not be dividing it. By leaving the deadheads on the flowers it seeded around. The seedlings are not all the same, they have different degrees of purple coloration so I realize they can't be called 'Summer Nights' but they are Heliopsis. I weed out any that don't have strong purple colors and will have a few pots of the darkest seedlings for sale (all are bloom size).

If I don't know a cultivar name, I label it by color. After experience I realize that most customers don't care about the name. This Astilbe has been in my garden for many years but was given to me without a name. I've got 16 pots of this beauty and the labels say Astilbe - White.

Unfortunately, this year I've been getting that feeling again. There are a few parents that just spoil the mood and I think this will be the last sale for the marching band. The other night we had a meeting and one parent said she wanted to make some suggestions about the sale (uh oh). She suggested that I add names on the tags that people could recognize instead of those impossible names. I explained that I only have time to write one name, either the botanical name or the nick name and I choose to write the botanical name so people can google the information about the plant and get the right information. This parent continued to say that I should also include the growing information on the tag and maybe draw a sun or a cloud so customers would know where to plant it. I bit my tongue because I wanted to ask if I should also go to each individual customers house and dig the hole. Right now it takes at least 10 hours to write those labels. Imagine if I had to put more information on them!

I'll close this post out with a shot of Anemone's in my garden. They are quite late emerging from the soil so I hope I find them in time to dig up a few.

Some years we've had donations of plants. Last year a friend donated huge clumps of Geranium nudosum and it was very popular. Variegated Hosta are something that I could always use but I haven't had any donations this year. One thing I can't do is go dig those donations (some parents have offered plants in the past and mentioned that I never came and dug them out). I will gladly divide and pot up any clumps that are dropped off here but I can barely find time to sit down to eat a meal and really just can't go to other gardens too.

(Oops, a quick edit added here. I forgot that I do have a wonderful donation of Monarda coming. Last year the red Monarda was very popular as it is such a butterfly magnet so I'm happy to be getting more. Thanks Kim!)

Finally, to answer Dave's question about whether the kids help at the sale, yes they help. The kids come an hour before the sale to help set up the tables and benches. They bring any wagons they might own. We ask everybody to bring recycled plastic supermarket bags. The kids are supposed to bag each plant and help bring them to the customers cars. We always make sure they work in teams, no student should be going alone to any car. Since I don't limit the amount of students who can participate we end up with half the band here so there is plenty of down time for them to sit and eat donuts, or play frisbee or if the weather permits, just lay on the lawn and learn to enjoy being outdoors for a change.

This year I'll ask two or three strong students to come here Friday evening to help load the truck. We'll be renting a truck to get the plants to the school. It eats into our profits a bit but we saved quite a bit of money thanks to the potting soil donation from Zaino's Nursery.

I know some of you have mentioned that you will be coming to the sale. Don't forget to say hello to me! I might only have time for a quick handshake or a hug but I really would love to say "hi".

Tomorrow I'm chaperoning a trip to the Bronx Zoo (amazingly cool place). Wednesday I'll be digging again and over the next week and a half I will continue to post photos of plants that we will feature at the sale. The list of daylilies alone is something to see.

Sorry this was so long, there's still so much to tell about the sale.
Melanie