Garden Club ushers in Spring with largest plant sale to date

Members of the Port St. Joe Garden Club spent all year propagating their hardiest plants, then potting and sorting them to be ready for sale. 

Many of them, Garden Club member Susan Wozniak said, aren’t even available in local stores.

“The inventory this year offered the most impressive variety of plants (in the event’s history),” Wozniak said. “Many of the plants are not available in area nurseries. Members who donated plants would say ‘ My grandmother gave me a cutting of this years ago’ or ‘These are babies of a plant I’ve had forever.”

On Saturday morning, club members arranged the plants on the historic St. Joseph Catholic Mission Church’s lawn in neat rows, clearly labeled and priced between $1 and $10, depending on the size and variety. 

All of the prep work is part of the garden club’s annual Spring Plant Sale, their largest annual fundraiser, which brings in money to support the garden club’s efforts in the community, including their upcoming landscaping efforts in downtown Port St. Joe, a bed at the community garden and scholarships for local students.

While Wozniak was not sure yet of the totals brought in on Saturday, she and other garden club members commented on the crowd size present at this year’s event, which was the largest they had seen. 

By the time the afternoon set in, most of the plants had been sold.

“There were people here before 8 a.m. when we opened,” said Susan Wozniak, “so we had to get started early.”

“Plant collectors in the know shopped early to snap up those rarer varieties of vegetables and houseplants.”

The garden club will not be holding a fall plant sale this year, deciding to focus their efforts on making their annual sale in the spring an even larger affair.

For more information about the Port St. Joe Garden Club, their plant sale or their efforts in the Gulf County community, visit their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/portstjoegardenclub or email psjgardenclub@gmail.com.