Plant Sale Wrap Up

We've finished up the plant sale for the year (most of the way at least), and I feel like doing a short recap of the related activities over the past few weeks. The plant sale has provided ups and downs throughout the year with its time commitments. Early in the fall preparing the outreach materials and order forms, and then again recently with the bundling and distribution have been time intensive. Late fall and winter were fairly easy with only the occasional order to enter in the computer. We sold all our stock except for a few quaking aspens. There were even a few species that were so popular that we had to order in more of them.

A few weeks ago in March we held our bundling event. Plants are shipped to us in large bags with a single species per bag. We have to take the plants out of those bags and fill our customer orders. Not all the plants are shipped in the correct sizes either. Some plants are shipped 50 to a bundle, which means we have to pull apart those bundles and shrink them to our sale size of 10 plants per bundle. Once all plants are in the correct bundle size we fill the orders by placing the plants into large garbage bags. Damp sawdust is added to each bag to help moisten the roots. A name tag is attached and the finished bundle is placed in a bin. Once all the orders are filled the bins are put back into the cold room to await the distribution day.

 Last Saturday marked the distribution/pick up day for our Native Plant Sale. Customers that had placed orders with us throughout the fall and winter were finally able to receive their much awaited plants. We arrived early to lay out all the plants alphabetically so we didn't have to waste time digging through the bins trying to find a certain order. All but a few people arrived during our three hour time slot to pick up their plants, and we've been working to get the last few orders into their owner’s hands. Hopefully by the end of this week all the orders will be accounted for.

So with the end of the plant sale in sight I can say I’m glad to be wrapping it up for the year and putting it on the shelf. I’ll add in my thoughts and any advice I can think of, and I’ll leave it in the binder for next year’s Americorps to have fun with.