Wareham ‘Springs into Bloom’ with Garden Club’s annual plant sale
May 16, 2021
Olivia “Elsa” Marino proudly displays the plants she plans to purchase: Silver Threads (left) and a tomato plant (right). Photos by: Madison Czopek
Chives for sale at the herbs table.
Shirley Neyhart, a Garden Club member, directs shoppers to the vegetable table.
Carole LaFreniere sold the Garden Club’s cookbooks and treats she’d baked herself using the cookbook recipes.
Cookbooks and treats for sale.
Joyce Holster brought in a selection of azaleas and rhododendrons to display at the education table.
The Wareham Garden Club’s annual “Spring into Bloom” plant and yard sale saw “fabulous” turnout on Saturday, May 15, according to Club President Barbara Van Inwegen.
She said the event went well, noting that the club wasn’t able to have its annual plant and yard sale for the public last year due to covid-19.
“It’s just great to see people,” Van Inwegen said. “And the weather couldn’t have been better.”
Inside the Methodist Meeting House at 495 Main St., residents could shop cookbooks and crafts — or learn about plant species. Van Inwegen said it was exciting to see the large variety of perennials on sale, and noted that by 10 a.m. — only an hour after the sale began — the vegetables and herbs were mostly sold out.
“It went quick,” said Shirley Neyhart, who has been a member of the garden club for two years and was working a table outside at the plant sale.
Mary Ziino, a Garden Club member who was inside working the crafts table, said the club uses the money it raises to support its scholarship fund and to promote civic beautification, among the club’s other programs.
Some vaccinated adults opted not to wear masks at the sale, but the event was still planned with covid-19 safety in mind.
“We set it up so that this year, all plants are outside,” said Judy Morgan, who planned the event and is vice president of the Garden Club. “And all the crafts and the cookbooks and the yard sale things are inside.”
Joyce Holster, chair of the Garden Club’s conservation committee, created two large storyboards to educate people on native and invasive plants. She brought in a selection of her brightly colored azaleas and rhododendrons to ensure the education table would catch people’s attention.
“I just brought in the flowers so people would come over and look at them, and then they’d wind up looking at the other stuff,” she said, pointing at the storyboards.
Another Garden Club member, Carole LaFreniere made treats from the Garden Club’s cookbook to sell alongside the books themselves.
“These are some of the recipes that are in the cookbook,” she said. “So when you buy a cookbook you get a bag of treats,” for the same price as a cookbook alone.
After the sale, Morgan provided lunch for her workers, “because they worked so hard for two or three days at this.”
