Flowers … are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
After an absence of two years, the Garden Club of Harvard’s annual plant sale will be back on Saturday, May 14, from 9 a.m. to noon. There’s another important event that day—the first session of 2022 Annual Town Meeting, starting at noon. But there’s no need to miss either one. Spend time in the morning stocking up on veggies, herbs, and flowers; grab lunch; play your part in town government; and then plant your garden in the cool of late afternoon. What could be a more perfect Saturday?
The plant sale is at Westward Orchards, 178 Mass. Ave., where it moved in 2018 after decades on the Common, starting in 1958. At Westward there’s plenty of parking, with members of the Lions Club to direct traffic. Girl Scouts are helping with setup and will be on hand to help carry plants to people’s cars. This year’s co-chairs for the plant sale are Claudia Wesley and Bill Loehfelm, and almost all club members work on the sale in some capacity.
Prices are generally lower than what you’d find at the nurseries—you’ll need cash or check for your purchases. The best bargain, though, is the friendly service and the invaluable ideas and tips the Garden Club members will happily share with you.
The Garden Club is a nonprofit organization, and proceeds from the sale go to landscaping projects and seasonal plantings around town, a garden therapy program, book donations to the library, educational programs, flowers for Bromfield graduation, an education grant, and donations to local organizations dedicated to horticulture or conservation.
The Garden Club of Harvard spent a picture-perfect morning at Westward Orchards to prep for their plant sale, which will be held at the orchard Saturday, May 14, from 9 a.m. to noon. (Photo by Thomas Kilian)
Perennials that are likely to thrive
Garden Club members have been working behind the Westward Orchards farm store, potting up shrubs and perennials since mid-April, often with a cold wind blowing. Because all plants have been dug from Harvard gardens, you can be sure they’ll also thrive in yours. Most of the perennials are not yet in bloom, but club members will be on hand to describe what they’ll look like and how to care for them. You’ll find such workhorses as bleeding heart, astilbe, hosta, Shasta daisy, sundrops, grasses, black-eyed Susan, iris, phlox, daylilies, and so many more. A few more rare plants will be at a specialty table.
If you’re impatient for color right now, you can buy your fill of annuals to go right into the garden. All danger of frost should be gone. But then, this is New England, so have a cloth ready to cover them, just in case. The wide selection of blooming plants comes from Lancaster Gardens. Geraniums and petunias are always popular, but there will also be some more unusual offerings.
For cooking, remedies, and fragrance, choose from a variety of herbs—parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme and, the less lyrical but just as worthy, basil, cilantro, dill, and oregano. These and others are grown specifically for the Garden Club by Herbs & Harvest of Groton.
Vegetables, like the herbs, are from seeds, also grown to order at Herbs & Harvest. There will be a variety of tomatoes, chosen for taste and disease resistance, early greens, several choices of peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, and varieties of squash. Nasturtiums, which are classified as both an herb and a vegetable, will be back. Cheerful flowers in shades of yellow and orange, they make an attractive and spicy addition to salads and may be used to repel insects.
New to the sale: Houseplants
New this year are houseplants, grown by a knowledgeable member of the club who will be on hand all morning to guide buyers on how to care for each plant. There will be a variety of plants such as jade, schefflera, dracaena, cactus, philodendron selloum, and more. Sizes vary from babies taken from clippings to divisions of plants more than 50 years old.
It’s easy to navigate around the tables at the plant sale. Perennials are divided into shade- and sun-loving and arranged in alphabetical order. Each perennial plant will have two sticks in it. A white stick will identify the plant with a clear label giving name and growing conditions. The colored stick is a price stick and corresponds to a color-coded price list posted in three or four locations around the sale area. Shrubs, annuals, herbs, veggies, and houseplants have their separate locations, and their prices are more uniform.
When you can’t carry any more plants, you’ll head for the tallying table, located just before the cashiers at the exit of the sale. A club member will add the prices of your plants and give you a slip with the total amount you owe. Pay that to the cashier—cash or check made out to GCH—take your purchases to your car, and return for another round at the sale.
Before heading out for good, you might want to pamper your purchases by picking up a bag of “magic beans” produced from the happy alpacas at Harvard Alpaca Ranch. The manure is free of weeds and requires no aging. In addition to providing nutrients for plants, it improves soil texture and helps with water retention.
Garden Club members are tough—the sale happens, sun, rain, fog, snow, or hail.
