The Carman Garden Club is preparing for its annual plant sale and is looking for donations to make it happen.
Every year, the local garden club hosts a plant sale, where locals can buy plants of all kinds for better prices than they would pay at the store. The annual plant sale has been happening for almost as long as the garden club has been active, which is celebrating 95 years in 2024. The sale acts as the club’s main fundraiser, growing from a few plants in a few hours to hundreds of plants in a few days.
MCC Thrift has partnered with the garden club, allowing them to hold their plant sale in their store for three days straight. From Thursday, May 30 to Saturday, June 1, people can purchase thrifted goods at the shop while taking in the massive plant sale.
“Last year, we had so many [plants] that the area we had set up in MCC wasn’t big enough, so we had plants in the back we were bringing out as more were sold,” said Debbie Vanderzwaag, president of the Carman Garden Club.
People can buy almost any kind of plant at the sale—perennials, annuals, small fruit plants like raspberries and saskatoons, succulents, houseplants, and this year, maybe even a couple of trees. Everything sold is started in garden club members’ gardens, and Vanderzwaag said they’re hardier than most plants bought at the store because they’re already acclimatized to our conditions. Prices range from $1 to $10, depending on plant size and quality.
The Carman Garden Club uses funds from the sale to pay for their speakers that present during the year and for their travel mileage to come to Carman. Funds also support the club’s junior gardener program and used to support the flower show, which the club is hoping to bring back soon. The club also typically has one outing for members each year and puts out a scholarship for a graduating student going into horticulture, which they support with the generated funds. MCC Thrift will also receive a portion of funds made at the sale.
Over the last couple years, the Carman Garden Club’s annual plant sale has been so successful, they’ve had leftover funds to donate to local organizations like the Boyne River Keepers and the Boyne Lodge.
To make a sale as big as this one possible, the garden club takes donations from people with plants to spare. Those looking to get rid of some perennials or annuals need only to call the club and members will remove the plants themselves if those donating don’t have the ability or time to.
“We’ll come with our shovels and dig them out ourselves,” said Vanderzwaag. “If people can’t or don’t want to dig them themselves, they don’t have to. We have lots of members ready to do that.”
To donate plants to the club’s sale, contact Vanderzwaag at 204-750-1482 or contact club member Liz DeWit at 204-745-3839.
