Plant sales offer bargains, help from gardeners
Gardeners are a generous bunch. Attend any plant sale this spring and you’ll see what I mean.
Eager volunteers seem to be everywhere, hauling heavy plants around, offering free advice, taking cash, serving countless cups of coffee, carrying purchases to customers’ cars, you name it.
Is it a connection to nature that makes us so willing to pitch in? Perhaps. Whatever, I find it heartwarming — in our greedy, grabby world — to see so many people helping out for free at these events.
As for the plants, you can find wonderful bargains, because another public-spirited aspect of gardening is that we love digging up offshoots from our own gardens and sharing them. I’ve discovered many exciting new plants that way — often for peanuts.
Here are a few upcoming plant sales in the GTA. (Apologies to those who got omitted due to lack of space.)
Super Plant Sale, Ontario Rock Garden & Hardy Plant Society, May 5, from noon to 4 p.m., Toronto Botanical Garden. A biggie, staged by a prestigious group. (“You aren’t a real gardener if you don’t belong to ORGS,” people often tell me reproachfully, and oh dear, I haven’t joined yet). Now in its fifth year, this blockbuster features many new and rare offerings from specialist nurseries and members’ gardens.
One contributor is plantswoman par excellence Mary Anne Robinson of Guelph. She’ll sell everything from her Siberian tomato seedlings (which have a fascinating past) to a hot new lacyedged primula called Elizabeth Killelay. And don’t forget the TBG’s own four-day plant sale the following week, starting May 8. Details at: torontobotanicalgarden.ca
Plant Fair, Parkdale and Toronto Horticultural Society, Saturday, May 11, 10.30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. Parkdale Public School and Community Centre (in the gym), 75 Lansdowne Ave. at Seaforth Ave. Another biggie, which consistently draws 100 volunteers to help out. Exciting plants, some bargains, frantic pace. (Go early). Warning: parking is limited. TTC it, if you can.
North American Native Plant Society Annual Sale. Also Saturday, May 11, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Markham Civic Centre, 101 Town Centre Blvd. (west of Warden Ave., north of Hwy. 7), Markham. The biggest native plant sale in Canada. Fans often drive from miles away. And it’s not surprising. Great array of wildflowers, ferns, grasses and sedges, plus trees and shrubs. Plenty of parking. plantsale@nanps.org
Perennial Plant Sale, Beach Garden Society. Saturday, May 18, 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Adam Beck Community Centre, 79 Lawlor Ave. (north of Kingston Rd.). The place to find popular “Beach Babies”—plants recommended by members because they’ll survive local conditions. But go early. They vanish fast.
Cloverleaf Plant Sale, Saturday, May 25, 2013, 8:30 a.m. to noon. Carmen Corbasson Community Centre parking lot (1389 Cawthra Rd). Perennials at bargain prices, offered by the Cloverleaf Club of Mississauga, one of the GTA’s most enthusiastic gardening groups. CloverleafGardenClub.org