There are things about the yearly Mother’s Day Weekend Plant Sale that don’t vary–there will be vegetable starts, there will be flowers. But every year the sale feels to me like a mystery box, so exciting to open.
While the InSpirit crew knows what we will be bringing, having spent over 4 months raising plants at our greenhouse, more than half of what we sell at the sale arrives at the site the night before the sale, never having been seen by our crew before.
Each year there are familiar faces carrying what grew well for them this season in cardboard boxes, ready for Karen Zaccaglini to direct them to the proper station, and new faces excitedly looking around at the bounty and pleased to show off their contribution. I think this is the first year we had fig trees. I am sure it is the first year we had Agapetes Sepens Pyrolifolio, ‘Ludgvan Cross’, a specialty shrub from Nepal, given to us by new contributor Diane Coughtry.
When all the after-sales are accounted for, and the costs deducted, we are likely to have raised over $12,000. A very satisfying amount! Once again there are so many people to thank. Over 20 growers, those who donated pots, statuary, and art, the Lions Club volunteers who create a deer-proof overnight holding area, the volunteers who transport the plants from the greenhouse to the site, the volunteers who worked the sale on a very hot day, giving good advice to new gardeners and information about InSpirit, the clean-up crew, the social media helpers, the Independent Journal columnist who featured us twice, the KWMR radio host who put together a psa that played the week before the sale, Fairfax Hardware, the Lagunitas School District, and of course the people who came and shopped, often donating more than the cost of their plants.
I’d like to give particular thanks to the crew that came week after week to the greenhouse: Marcia Gunnarson, Stephanie Fein, Molly Whitely, Jean Kinsey and our middle school intern, Poppy Henderson.
We had fun and we worked hard for a very good cause!