North Stonington Garden Club Plant Sale

The North Stonington Garden Club will hold its annual plant sale on Saturday, May 13, from 9am to 1pm at the North Stonington Elementary School, 311 Norwich-Westerly Road (Route 2).

Offerings will include a wide selection of perennials, annuals, vegetable seedlings, heirloom tomatoes, herbs, hanging baskets, and a great rummage table. University of Rhode Island soil testers will be on site, to test soil texture and pH for customers who bring a soil sample. Other features will include a Master Gardener table, where customers can get advice on their gardening issues, and a wide selection of affordable Mother’s Day gifts, including container plantings, decorative garden art, and this year for the first time, colorful and practical garden aprons.

This is one of the largest and most comprehensive of the many plant sales held in the area at this time of year, and many loyal customers travel considerable distances each year to take advantage of the wide variety of plant offerings. By the time the gate opens at 9am, there is generally a line of eager customers, many bringing their own garden carts to take maximum advantage of the bargains to be had, a practice that the club actively encourages. The Garden Club provides trays for customers to carry their plants, and also a holding area, where keen gardeners who choose more plants than they can carry can leave their selections until they are ready to pay. Other conveniences to accommodate customers are multiple cashier stations, and the services of ‘talliers’, members identified by their green aprons and clipboards, who speed the payment process by adding up the total cost of each customer’s purchase before the customer joins the cashier line. Cash payments and personal checks are accepted, but not, at this time, credit cards.

The majority of the perennials offered for sale are dug from the gardens of club members, and so customers can be confident they will thrive under local conditions. These offerings are supplemented by annuals, perennials, herbs, hanging baskets, tomatoes, and vegetables purchased from reputable local nurseries and offered at prices only slightly wholesale cost.

For those whose shopping stamina flags in the face of so much horticultural bounty, the ladies of the North Stonington Congregational Church will be on hand, selling sandwiches, snacks, and their famous pies.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale are returned to the community in the form of seasonal civic plantings at North Stonington’s Town Hall and Village Green, winter wreaths on public buildings, an annual scholarship, and grants to local organizations. Recipients in recent years have been Wheeler Library, North Stonington’s Hewitt Farm, Coogan Farm in Mystic, Ashaway Free Public Library, the West Vine Street School, and local land trusts, Avalonia Land Conservancy and GOSA.