Our in-person Spring 2022 Native Plant Sale was a great success. By the end of the third day, I felt glad to be done. No more waking up at 6 am, heat, and biting wind. But now, rising on the morning of the fourth day, I miss the good work. It’s like a dream but it happened: we sold hundreds and hundreds of California native plants that will find their way into gardens, providing food and habitat for local insects, birds and wildlife.
Our plant sales are the main way we raise funds. But obviously the money is not the main thing, because we haven’t raised our prices in many years. While inflation sends other prices soaring, you can still buy a gallon plant at the Shasta Chapter plant sale for $7, an amazing bargain. That plant (and the plant sale) is the culmination of so much love and effort.
The plant sale is our most profound and complete educational event. When a new customer comes up and asks, “What is going on here?” it presents the grandest opportunity. Explain the mission of CNPS, the critical importance of native plants to life in California, and all that we do locally. Encourage membership in the State organization and affiliation with our Chapter. Explore their landscape needs with them to find the best plants for their site. Volunteers sharing years and years of native plant gardening experience. Master Gardener tips for gardening in drought conditions. Teaching folks how to use Calscape, so they can have some independence.
There is nothing like the sight of a shopper having found the perfect plant, the joy in their face. They have found a snowberry with the prettiest shape, every leaf healthy, and vigorous green shoots coming up from the base. That plant will make it for sure, and give years of pleasure. Or another customer who buys a plant that may not look quite its best, just waking up and leafing out, because they sense that individual plant’s potential and have the desire to grow and steward it.
The spring sale is special because sometimes the plants are in bloom. The tiny blooms of blue-eyed grass, the white form ‘San Simeon,’ hopeful buds popping into six petals, and then it’s sold. Western blue flax, that withered in the 90-degree heat of set-up day, but by the second and third days, was covered in a score of flax blue flowers. The customer was in awe of that special shade of blue. Such joy!
It is the stories of success from customers: the small plants bought 10 or 15 years ago that are now towering and integral parts of gardens. Or maybe a plant bought at one of our past sales has died after a long, healthy life, and our member is back for a replacement. The endless story of hope and faith. And so we see old friends, who we may not have seen in years, and trade stories about our lives and our gardens, learning from each other. Or we meet new people, friends to be, and exchange numbers.
The plants bought to be grown in remembrance of lost friends and family. The hope to be found in recreating a landscape lost to fire. Life goes on. The perseverance demonstrated in having moved to a home that has a traditional, insect food-desert landscape of crepe myrtles and Bradford pears, and now having to begin once again the process of conversion to California native plants. But some of us are young (or young at heart) and up to the challenge. And we begin again.
Thank you for being part of the journey.
~John Springer, Shasta Chapter CNPS Treasurer
