Green thumbs descend on VanDusen Garden
Early birds will get the best pickings at 40th anniversary of popular plant sale
Margie Daniels was hard at work Wednesday morning helping to prepare the popular potluck group of plants for the VanDusen Botanical Garden Plant Sale.
Part of what she was doing was writing down the common and Latin names for some of the potluck plants that are all donated. Unlike plants in the other tents at the sale where everything is carefully grouped by various categories, the plants in potluck can be for all seasons and for specific conditions such as shade or sun. While they ’re marked with a name, variety and colour wherever possible, the identifying information is sometimes just an informed guess.
Daniels recalled that in the first year of the potluck section, they were given “these wonderful primulas from Stanley Park.”
“Well, you should have heard us selling them,” she said.
The only problem was that they weren’t colourful primula flowers. They were teasel, a prickly plant traditionally used to tease wool.
“The people came back the next year and said: ‘You know, that wasn’t primula,’ which I thought was wonderful,” Daniels recalled.
Like the customers who came back to another VanDusen plant sale despite not getting exactly what they wanted, Daniels, 86, and fellow gardener Jill Purdy, 78, have come back year after year to volunteer at the sale that is celebrating its 40th anniversary this Sunday. They were both at the very first plant sale in 1978.
“We have a lot of fun,” Purdy said about volunteering at VanDusen. “We’ve supported each other.”
The annual sale at the garden at West 37th Avenue and Oak in Vancouver was started for three reasons said Margie Knox, the 2018 plant-sale chair.
“One, to raise funds for the garden, which it still does,” Knox said. “Two, to raise awareness of VanDusen. The idea was to build a relationship with the people of Vancouver. In 1978, VanDusen was still very new. It had only opened in 1975. The third reason was to help people have access to great plants.”
The two co-chairs of the first plant sale were Janet Fraser and Alix Brown.
All proceeds go to the Vancouver Botanical Gardens Association’s educational programs, which include guided tours of VanDusen for students. Last year, the sale had a net profit of $50,000.
(The association operates VanDusen and the Bloedel Conservatory with the city’s park board.)
For the biggest plant sale in Metro Vancouver, Knox expects 10,000 or more people will show up for the sale Sunday, which opens at 10 a.m. The lineup starts to form around 6:30 a.m. and can stretch all the way from the entrance on West 37th to around the corner and north down Oak.
For sale day, people enter VanDusen through the gate off the parking lot on 37th and not by using the main entrance.
“When we open, there is a mad rush,” she said. “Everybody runs in. The really avid gardeners want to be first at the plants that they want. By 10:15 that lineup has largely dissipated and people come at a more leisurely pace.”
Once inside, tents are set up on the Great Lawn and Lower Great
When we open, there is a mad rush. Everybody runs in. The really avid gardeners want to be first at the plants …
Lawn to accommodate an estimated 30,000 flowers and plants. They’re all separated into numerous categories, such as fuchsias and begonias, rhododendrons and azaleas and Pacific Northwest native plants. A catalogue of all plants is available online.
Knox recommends people bring a wheelbarrow, cart or something to carry the plants they’ve purchased. In the plant-hold area, you can leave your big plants so you can keep shopping; in the plant-check area, you can leave all your purchases while you go and get your vehicle.
Knox recommends people come by bus where possible. If that’s not an option, she said make sure you’re considerate when parking on streets in the neighbourhood.
While the plant sale is designed for people with outdoor gardens, VanDusen has added, for the first time, indoor plants for people living in smaller spaces such as condos and apartments. The indoor plants will be included with the orchids.
“We have a section of really, really good indoor plants,” Knox said.
Even if you don’t want to buy very much or anything at all, Sunday is a special day because all 55 acres of VanDusen are free to the public until closing at 4 p.m.
“This is a pretty amazing time to enjoy VanDusen,” Knox said.