More than 2,000 plants, many rare and unusual and all donated by home gardeners throughout the U.S. 1 circulation area, will be offered at bargain prices by the Rutgers Master Gardeners of Mercer County at their annual Plant Expo this Saturday, May 6.
The event, held at the Master Gardeners Educational Gardens in Pennington from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., also includes offerings from selected local vendors and will be staffed by Master Gardeners answering questions and offering advice on what plants are suitable for different growing conditions.
Planning for the event started last January, when five Master Gardeners volunteered to assume various responsibilities as co-chairs. Through their personal contacts and through past participants, they knew home gardeners to contact in Ewing, Columbus, Hamilton, Hopewell, Lawrence, Plainsboro, Princeton, Trenton, and West Windsor.
The result is a plethora of plants that are proven homegrown beauties. Among the plants offered this year are rare, yellow-flowered British cowslips, intensely fragrant white flowered dianthuses, native Oak Leaf hydrangeas, and evergreen, deer, and rabbit resistant Teucrium shrubs.
“The five of us collect and pot these plants throughout much of April,” co-chair Harri Nowrey of Hamilton says. “Some gardeners can only donate a few and others are what we call big digs.”
Co-chair Susan Maley, a Columbus gardener, is in charge of big digs, those dealing with 100 or more plants. Maley will be contacted by someone with a large garden who needs help dividing or cleaning out a lot of perennials — say up to 200. Under Maley’s supervision, the Master Gardeners are more than happy to help out but limit their choices to plants that are not invasive. This year, for example, they had to decline Asian Kousa dogwood offerings.
A big dig involves compost from the Hamilton and Lawrence sites, collecting bins to hold the soil (“My Hamilton neighbors are great for this,” Nowrey reports), and unlabeled pots (“We can’t, alas, use any containers with the Proven Winners logo or other brands on them,” Nowrey notes).
“Usually, all five of us work on a big dig,” Nowrey says. “We bring our own tools, tables to work on, and tarps to cover up loose dirt from the digging.” Maley stresses that the Master Gardeners pride themselves on leaving a pristine workplace after they leave.
Co-chair Ann Mann from Princeton is in charge of plant labels. While it may not appear so, this is a crucial task, one that involves nailing down the correct name for hundreds of different plants. A plant, for example, cannot be identified as a perennial geranium because there are at least two dozen different perennial geraniums. A standout geranium offered at the Plant Expo this year is identified as G. biokovo and was named a Perennial Plant of the Year in 2015. It is evergreen, has pink-tinged white flowers throughout mid to late spring; colorful, evergreen fall and winter foliage; and is avoided by both deer and rabbits.
In addition, Mann is responsible for each label containing growing information for the plant. Thus light and soil conditions, height, width, and if the plant is native or a good pollinator is indicated on the label.
The five co-chairs have, it seems, been busier than ever this week as they have been driving throughout Mercer County. Their goal: to go back to home gardens where the potted plants have been stored, load up their cars, and then deliver the donations to the Plant Expo. After the pots are unloaded and grouped by name (there are multiples of each plant), Mann checks all to make sure they are property identified.
And there’s more, as co-chair Carol Bencivengo of Hamilton explains. “The plants are then inspected by agents of the State Department of Agriculture for pests and diseases. This ensures,” she continues, “that all the plants are not only homegrown beauties but also healthy.”
Five regional vendors have been invited to participate in the Expo and increase the range of goods for sale. These vendors and their offerings are: Byrne Farm Market, Wrightstown: annuals and succulents; Chickadee Creek Farm, Pennington: organic vegetables; Moonshot Farm, East Windsor: cut flowers; Steven Kristoph Nursery, Millstone: trees and shrubs; and Shannon’s Nursery, Doylestown: native plants.
Dozens of Master Gardeners have signed up to participate in the Plant Expo this Saturday to help answer questions and to offer advice on the appropriateness of any selected plant. They are all trained and certified, having completed 21 weeks of academic class work and hours of volunteer work. The last involves staffing phones to answer garden questions to during the week, hosting seminars, and also partnering with local organizations such as the Boys and Girls Club Centre Street Garden in Trenton.
Co-chair Stephanie Foy of West Windsor will be among those not only arriving early to ensure that all is in place but also working in the homegrown section. She notes that both cash and credit cards are accepted and emphasizes that there is lots of parking at the Plant Expo. She also reminds those who are looking to truly take advantage of all the plant bargains to bring either a cart or a box to carry away their new treasures.
“Though many of us have other huge time commitments and our muscles ache after all the work involved, we keep doing it because it’s a great way to not only benefit various organizations in our area, but also to enrich the beauty of home gardens,” Bencivengo says.
Plant Expo, Rutgers Master Gardeners of Mercer County, 431A Federal City Road, Pennington. Saturday, May 6, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. www.mgofmc.org.
