Big business retailers have Black Friday. The Niagara-on-the-Lake Horticultural Society has Green Saturday.
While not its official name, the society’s annual spring plant sale, being held this year on May 11 at the Meridian Credit Union Arena in Virgil, is one of those door-crasher events that amateur and professional greenthumbs alike have marked on their calendars for months.
“When we set up on Friday we have to make sure we have a barrier at the front and a pathway through (into the entrance),” said the society’s president Cindy Grant.
“We open the, quote unquote, gates at 9 o’clock (on Saturday) and they are lined up down the parking lot and around the corner.”
“Get there early,” she advises.
Featuring annuals, perennials, herbs, vegetables and fruits, the sale is where the sights and smells of spring meet the masses, helping to turn NOTL and area yards, homes and businesses into a sea of colour and flair.
All of the plants available for purchase are locally sourced, either through regional wholesalers or from the yards of area residents.
“We ask our members to transplant and donate extras that they have in their gardens,” said Grant.
“It’s a wide variety of things. For example, I am going to be donating some iris and Solomon’s seal. People know that the plants are coming from good gardens.”
What people may not know, she added, is that a large portion of the proceeds from the sale, the Gardener’s Garden Tour in July and a third event later in the summer, go back into the community.
“This year most of the money that we are able to make from both the plant sale and the garden tour and another fundraiser that we are hosting at Kent (Heritage) Farms at the end of July are going to support two scholarships, one at the Niagara College School of Horticulture and the other at Niagara Parks School of Horticulture.”
Shoppers won’t have to break the bank in order to support their own gardening needs or the futures of two fortunate students.
Many of the plants at the sale can be purchased for under $10. The sale ends at noon.
