Plant sales in season in Clark County

On a sleepy Wednesday in April, it’s bright and bustling in the dozen greenhouses at 78th Street Heritage Farm. Volunteers are scattered throughout the site working swiftly to propagate, count and pot plants in preparation for the annual Mother’s Day weekend sale.

This time of year, most everyone is putting in extra volunteer hours to prepare for the two-day plant sale, a huge fundraiser for the Master Gardener Foundation. Last year’s sale brought in more than $50,000, allowing the foundation to give out 19 horticulture grants throughout Clark County that included money to support Clark County’s Master Gardner Program through Washington State University Extension.

“It’s bigger every year,” volunteer Marie Ogier says.

Ogier and other frantic volunteers are unsure when the sale first started. The late ’80s? Mid-’90s? What they do know is that the sale started as a small single-day event in the parking lot. Since then, it’s grown into a massive operation, requiring all hands on deck and a crew of people directing traffic.

The Master Gardener Foundation gathers plant donations in the fall and the early spring. A “dig team” goes out to people’s yards to collect plants, and nurseries donate plants and seeds. Those plants are brought back to the farm’s greenhouses where they’re tended to until the sale. The plants that make up the Welcome to Washington sign are housed here, too, along with heritage plants for the Fort Vancouver Garden.

Some plants that are donated have gone out of commercial production, so they can’t be found at big box stores. Volunteer Fran Hammond gestures toward some unusual dog tooth lilies, or erythronium, that were donated by a nursery.

Shade-loving, sun-loving, edibles, ornamentals, houseplants — they’re all here. Generally, prices range from $1.25 to $20.

“People tend to make a beeline right for the tomatoes first,” Ogier says.

There are 58 varieties of tomatoes, including some that are grafted to a native root stalk, making them better suited for native soil and conditions. Salsa bowls are potted with everything needed to make salsa (tomatoes, onions, cilantro, maybe peppers or garlic). Coleus, marigolds and hanging baskets are popular picks, as well.

“Anything that has a flower is very popular,” says Michelle Dalmateer.

Volunteers pay attention to what’s in demand and grow more of that for the next sale.

The plant sales held by schools and nonprofits such as the Master Gardener Foundation raise funds and, for customers, it’s an affordable way to update gardens and replace plants that died — particularly delicate perennials and unestablished plants that didn’t do well during the harsh winter.

The nonprofit Nature-Scaping of SW Washington’s plant sale is its main revenue generator and helps cover the costs of maintaining the 3-acre Wildlife Botanical Gardens in Brush Prairie.

“This is big for us,” says Marlene Dellsy, administrative assistant at Nature-Scaping. “Around 350 to 400 people come through.”

Most of the plants are bare root, meaning they’re not in dirt and need to be planted quickly, which is why NatureScaping is able to sell them for cheap, Dellsy says.

She compares these fundraising plant sales to thrift shopping: It’s about hunting for a good deal on a plant that would normally cost more at “retail price.”