The Backyard Plant Sale

The 9th Annual Backyard Plant Sale preparations are beginning!

Spring is making its heady appearance and I am well underway with preparations for the 9th Annual Backyard Plant Sale. I hope you all are happily gardening.

For those of you who don’t know about “The Backyard Plant Sale”, I hold a plant sale in my back yard each year. The plants are donated by interested people like you and come from our own gardens. Last year, we had over 1200 plants donated and, additionally, over 5000 daffodil bulbs were donated by Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. Proceeds from the sale benefit The Nature Conservancy’s Chesapeake Rivers Program specifically for land acquisitions in our area. The dates this year will be:

Friday, May 1 from 4:00 pm - dark
Saturday, May 2 from 9am - 1pm

The location is my back yard at 203 Howard Street in Ashland.

For those who donate plants, there are the excellent perks! There will be a preview sale for donors on Thursday, April 30 from 4-dark. On this day, only donors may purchase up to the number of plants donated by that person. Some items actually sell out on this day. So the more plants you donate, the more purchasing power you have. It is permissible to bring a friend and share your “credits” with your friend. Saturday at 1:00, all leftover plants are given to any plant donor in any quantity. This part of the sale has become very popular to the donors. Those who are not plant donors can still purchase plants at this time until they are gone.

The procedure for the sale is this: If you have plants to donate, you can leave them on my front porch any time during the week before the sale (please leave your name so I know who donated what) or call me if you need help getting them here and I will arrange for pick up. If you can label them, that’s great, but most people (like myself) are lucky to get them in the pots in time. No invasive alien plants will be sold (see attached invasive species list – it may surprise you!) and we love to see Virginia native plants at the sale. Then, if you are a donor, show up at the preview or any of the sale times if you would like to shop for plants. Donors who would like free leftover plants can show up at 1:00 or later after the sale is over (there’s always good stuff left). And, of course, you don’t have to donate plants to shop on Friday and Saturday.

For those of you who love to garden, this is a wonderful way of making a donation to an organization that preserves land in our area. If you are on facebook you can find a page called “Annual Backyard Plant Sale” where I will be posting information as well.

Thank you very much.
Julie Ericksen

28 Mar, 2009 | Julie

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