Garden club plant sale planned April 22
The Bella Vista Garden Club will hold the first of two plant sales this year on Saturday, April 22, at Village Wastewater at 380 Bella Vista Way.
Plant Sale Chair Joal Miller said club members have been caring for coleus cuttings since November and have just planted tomato seeds. She also said zinnias planted from seeds are seedlings at this stage, but there will be lovely blooms on the plants by April.
In recent years the club has asked customers to set up appointments due to covid concerns, however, this year’s event will be an open sale with everyone welcome from 8 a.m.-1 p.m., she said.
The second sale of this year, the perennial sale, will be held a little later than usual, on June 2-3. Miller explained that the sale was held a little later than usual last year, and customers liked that all the plants were blooming, which is more typical of what they were used to seeing in a nursery. The club decided they would see how customers liked it again this year, she said.
Proceeds from the sales go toward the garden club’s scholarship fund, which last year enabled the club to award three scholarships totaling $9,500 to students attending the University of Arkansas horticultural program.
Miller said of the sale, “It’s a lot of work. None of us mind. I live so close to Wastewater I’m over there twice a day.”
She said she and other members of the club have to make sure the heaters in the hothouses are turned on and off at appropriate times and that the plants are watered. During the most recent wintry weather, no one in the club was able to get there for four days, she said, but Village Wastewater employees took care of the heaters and the watering, she said.
“The guys at Wastewater are great,” she said. “We are so lucky to have those guys.”
She said the club will soon start transplanting seedlings to larger pots. She added the club would love it if anyone returned the one-gallon pots from previous sales.