Get your green thumb ready for some great local deals
Are you starting your first garden and want some great plants at a great price? Are you a seasoned grower who’s looking for some special varieties to add to your collection? Do you want to support our local Selkirk and District Horticultural Society (SDHS)? You can do this on May 26 at their annual plant sale where for only two hours thousands of plants are sold and money is raised to help the SDHS keep giving back to our community.
“All the plants that are at the plant sale are donated by our members and we usually have between 3000 and 4000 plants,” said Leila Wegert, internal organization director for the SDHS
The plant sale is organized by Betty Gowerluk-Wazny, plant sale director, and will take place on Friday, May 26 from 6- 8 p.m. at Memorial Hall on Jemima St.
“The sale is an opportunity to buy locally grown plants, which means that they are more likely to succeed in your garden because they weren’t raised in British Columbia or someplace where that climate is totally different. It’s a chance to buy locally grown plants at very reasonable prices. We will have some specialty plants too. We never know exactly what we’re going to have until the day of but we will definitely have some plants that are maybe a little bit harder to find in nurseries,” said Wegert.
She says that it’s also a good variety of plants with annuals, perennials, vegetables, herbs, houseplants, shrubs, bushes and even small trees being available.
All proceeds from the sale support the SDHS which has given a lot back to the community in terms of local beautification and volunteerism in its 29 years in the community.
The group started when the founding members got together all wanting a gardening club in our community.
They meet monthly on the third Tuesday of the month at Selkirk United Hall skipping the months of July, August and December. Most months the group has a guest speaker chat with the group on gardening related topics but they do have a couple of months where they have potluck dinners.
Membership for the SDHS is $20 per person or $25 for a family membership and all members get a copy of the Prairie Gardener magazine.
“It’s the bargain of the century and in addition to getting the book, you also will have access to workshops that we do,” said Wegert.
“We also have member garden tours which are open to the membership and usually a few friends come along but they’re tours of either member’s gardens or other gardens in the area. Our members are very spread out. We are Selkirk and district and we actually have way more members from the district than we do from the City of Selkirk. We have people from St. Clements, St. Andrews, quite a few members who actually live in Winnipeg and we have a fairly good sized contingent that comes from Winnipeg Beach,” said Wegert.
Members are also very connected with other community groups like Communities in Bloom and the group volunteers maintain three gardens in the City of Selkirk. The gardens at Queens Park, the beautiful flowers at Red Feather Farm and the beautiful display that is the Main Street Garden.
“We’ve also worked with the schools on monarch butterfly projects. Some of our members went into schools and talked to the children about the lifecycle of Monarch butterflies. And one year we gave away free milkweed to the first 200 people that came to the plant sale so that they could plant the milkweed and attract the monarchs,” she said.
The plant sale is the SDHS’s biggest fundraiser of the year for these local projects and is a cash only sale.
“It’s only open for two hours. So it sounds like that would be impossible. But because there are so many plants, it takes us the entire day just set it up,” said Wegert.
She cautions residents that there is often a line before the sale and though the first hour of the sale is incredibly busy, the organization that the group does ahead of time allows the sale to go quite smoothly.
There will be club members around who can help answer questions about the plants.
“We do have boxes available to put the plants in. You don’t actually have to bring your own container. We’ll give you something to carry them out. We even have some people who will help you carry it out, if you have problems carrying everything because sometimes you can get carried away when the prices are so reasonable,” said Wegert.
She encourages anyone in the community who is interested in purchasing plants to feel welcome to come to the plant sale.
“We are inviting everyone. We know that we have some customers who come every year who really looked forward to it and save some of their plant [purchasing] just for our sale because they know they can pick up quite a few different things. But, if you have never been, you should come because it’s the real experience,” said Wegert.
