The Garden Club of Harvard’s annual plant sale is Saturday, May 18, from 9 a.m. to noon behind the Westward Orchards Farm Store, 178 Mass. Ave. The sale is timed so that plants you buy—shrubs, perennials, annuals, herbs, and veggies—can go right into the ground with minimum danger of a hard frost. Prices are lower than what you’d find at most nurseries, especially for perennials. But most importantly, you’ll find plenty of club members available to answer questions, give valuable ideas and tips, and help you plan what to plant where.
At Westward there’s plenty of parking, with members of the Lions Club to direct traffic. The Scouts are helping with setup and will be on hand to help carry plants to people’s cars. Talliers will add up your purchases so the lines at the cashiers move along quickly. You may pay with cash or by check or credit card. Westward will have their cider donuts for sale.
This year’s co-chairs for the plant sale are Marijke Vallaeys and Carole Herbin, and almost all club members work on the sale in some capacity. According to Vallaeys everything is about the same as usual this year, which is a good thing since returning customers know what they can count on. Newcomers will find the sale easy to navigate. Vallaeys said there are more shrubs than usual this year, including kerria and rhododendron, and there is an emphasis on native plants.
Phyllis Clawson, Jane Vasta, and Maureen Remeika pot chrysanthemums in preparation for the May 18 plant sale behind Westward Orchard’s farmstand. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Workhorse perennials
The stars of the sale are the perennials, almost 1,000 of them. Because all have been dug from Harvard gardens, you can be sure they’ll also thrive in yours. And because they have been only recently potted, they are not root-bound, as nursery plants often are, and will readily establish themselves. Club members have been working behind the Westward store, potting up shrubs and perennials since mid-April, often in adverse weather conditions. Most of the perennials are not yet in bloom, but club members will 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, primrose, iris, phlox, daylilies, and many more. A few more rare plants, like double bloodroot and sedge, 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. 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, including parsley, sage, basil, cilantro, dill, thyme, and lavender. These and others are grown specifically for the Garden Club by Herbs & Harvest of Groton. Also from members’ gardens are mint, rhubarb, lovage, and onion chive.
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.
Navigating the sale
The sale is well organized, and it’s easy to navigate around the tables. 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, and veggies have their separate locations, and their prices are more uniform.
A selection of houseplants is offered for the second year, most of them 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. Along with spider plant, jade, and zebra plant will be a large ficus tree and queen of the night cactus, whose fragrance is worth waiting for the single nighttime blooming.
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 amount you owe. Pay that to the cashier—cash, credit card, 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.
The Garden Club is a nonprofit service organization, and proceeds from the sale go to landscaping projects and seasonal plantings around town, a garden therapy program, book donations and weekly flower arrangements for the library, educational programs to which the public is welcome, flowers for Bromfield graduation, an education grant, and donations to local organizations dedicated to horticulture or conservation.
The sale happens regardless of the weather.
